Torrential rain from Hilary causes dangerous mudslides, rockslides in Southern California
Angeli Gabriel – August 20, 2023
Floodwater surges in Southern California ahead of Hilary
Video shows floodwater rushing through the Sheep Canyon Wash in Wrightwood, California on August 20, 2023. (Courtesy: @TransverseDream / Twitter)
PALMDALE, Calif. – Mud poured onto a roadway near Los Angeles, creating hazardous conditions for drivers hours before Tropical Storm Hilary brought potentially life-threatening floods to the area.
Mudslide in Palmdale in Southern California. August 20, 2023.
Down south in the town of Mountain Spring, a road was closed due to a rockslide, according to the National Weather Service. In nearby Calexico, another rockslide led boulders larger than a truck to fall onto the road.
California Department of Transportation crews addressing a rockslide on SR-98 near Calexico. August 20, 2023.
Rain from Tropical Storm Hilary also flooded some roads. In the video below, floodwaters rushed over EB Route 118 near the town of Llano in Southern California.
Floodwater from Hilary near Llano, California. August 20, 2023.
Tropical Storm Hilary has already pummeled the northern Baja California Peninsula of Mexico, where it dropped torrential rain and caused catastrophic flooding. The storm has already claimed at least one life in Mexico after a family of five was swept into the sea while crossing a stream in the Baja California Sur state, according to local officials.
Catastrophic flooding is also expected for parts of Southern California, which is experiencing its first-ever Tropical Storm Warning. In fact, some areas may receive up to 8 inches of rain through Tuesday evening.
Many people escaped the deadly Maui wildfires – some in harrowing fashion – but their ordeal may not be over.
The harmful effects of wildfire exposure don’t disappear once the flames are extinguished, experts said. There is growing research that suggests breathing in the tiny particles from wildfire smoke can produce cognitive deficits, which may appear in as little as six to 12 months or even years later.
Surviving a near-death experience also raises the risk of post-traumatic stress, with such symptoms as depression, sleep disorders, anxiety and survivor’s guilt, researchers said.
“Of course, the immediate most important thing is to survive,” said Marc Weisskopf, professor of environmental epidemiology and physiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who studies the relationship between air pollution and brain health. “But unfortunately, those who do survive also may be vulnerable to both long- and short-term effects on the brain caused by this exposure.”
Some survivors of wildfires describe their cognitive struggles after escaping the blaze as “fire brain.”
Living with ‘fire brain’
Randy Gerhardt, 66, and wife Sandi Knapp Gerhardt, 55, fled the 2018 Camp Fire in California, the deadliest and most destructive in that state’s history, and noticed changes in themselves almost immediately. They would have clear mental pictures of an item they would be looking for – a tool, a lawn game – but couldn’t recognize the new item they replaced it with. Other times, they would walk into a room and not know why they were there.
Gerhardt, a retired salesman for Frito-Lay, had been used to a busy work schedule and just as robust slate of projects and hobbies. After the fire, he couldn’t finish tasks, let alone get enough motivation to start them.
“I didn’t know what the heck was wrong with me,” Gerhardt said. “I built seven houses, helped build two churches. Used to work 65-70 hours a week.”
The couple chalked up their new behavior to stress. “But this was different than just stress,” Gerhardt said. “You wonder why you’re being so worthless and lazy. I’d have a list and not feel like doing any of it. Even my bills, I’d just let them sit there for a month.”
Even rebuilding a home in Paradise took Gerhardt an uncharacteristically long two years. “All my friends would ask, ‘how is the house coming?’ and I just wouldn’t work on it,” he said.
For a period of two years after the fire, Gerhardt and his wife met weekly with five other couples who were living in trailers set up on the property of a tile factory owned by a friend. The group, who dubbed themselves “the forever friends,” would talk and exchange information and what they were going through.
He thinks it was in that group that someone first mentioned to him the idea of “fire brain.” In chats with emergency room doctors since then, he was given further confirmation that what he was experiencing was not only real but also common among some fire survivors.
Having his feelings and behaviors named made him feel less broken, he said.
“I felt vindicated,” he said. “I wasn’t crazy. What I was going through was normal, I wasn’t weaker.”
Trauma related to climate change
Trauma from surviving natural disasters related to climate change is also different from other one-time events such as a car accident or sexual assault, said Dhakshin Ramanathan, associate professor in residence in psychiatry at the University of California at San Diego.
“People see the environment as a refuge, a positive healing thing,” he said. “When something you see as positive turns against you, that’s a difficult thing for many people to deal with.”
There is added stress from not being able to predict whether survivors will be exposed again. “Climate will be a sustained stress that will be harder to treat,” Ramanathan said.
One study conducted after the Camp Fire found that more than 30 percent of those directly exposed had symptoms of post-traumatic stress, “and these symptoms were three times more prevalent than in non-exposed communities on the West Coast,” said Jyoti Mishra, lead author and associate professor of psychiatry at the UC-San Diego.
“Indirectly exposed individuals, that is, those who lived in the community where the wildfire happened, were also affected by PTSD but to a lesser extent than directly exposed individuals,” she said.
Laura Nelson, 39, fled the Camp Fire with her cat, dog and bearded lizard hoping to find a quick exit by car. Instead, she was stuck in a massive traffic jam along Paradise’s Skyway as the fire raced uphill.
“I thought I was going to die in a line of cars for four hours,” Nelson recalled.
With no close family nearby, she lived in her car for several months before settling in Oregon where she began experiencing tinnitus, vertigo, intrusive thoughts and nightmares.
“In Oregon, part of the mental health effects I was experiencing was isolation, it was being misconceived,” said Nelson, whose new community could not understand why she found traffic jams or the smell of smoke triggering.
She struggled to reconcile with the reality that her possessions had been destroyed in the fire, often bypassing items at the mall because she believed she still had a particular fork or sweater or belt. Beyond what she described as a kind of brain fog, symptoms of her worsening mental health emerged later, including thoughts of suicide.
“I was totally alone,” Nelson said. “It became very overwhelming and isolating, and you think of things that you’ve never thought of before.” Doctors prescribed medication, but there was no pill for what she needed.
“I didn’t have a disease,” Nelson said. “I had trauma.”
There also is guilt, along with increased anxiety and depression, experts said. “Survivors often feel they should have done more to help others, which can be psychologically damaging and guilt-producing – and totally irrational,” said Andrea Roberts, senior research scientist in environmental health at the Chan school, who was not involved in the Camp Fire study. “In most cases, there is nothing they could have done.”
Cognitive deficits after escaping wildfire
The Camp Fire study also looked at cognitive functioning within six months to a year after the fire, using the Flanker task, which measures the ability to suppress distractions while focusing on a task. They found a 20 percent deficit among those who had been exposed to wildfires compared with those who had not.
“Breathing in particulate matter can lead to inflammatory responses in the body,” Mishra said. ‘That affects brain processes. How it influences brain processes is still a question.”
When the researchers looked at brain function underlying specific cognitive functions, they found heightened activity in the left frontal part of the brain that was more pronounced in those exposed to wildfires, she said.
“It’s overprocessing all the stimuli coming at you,” Mishra said. “That’s what happens in traumatized brains.”
These results are consistent with the “common trajectory” of mental health that follows a traumatic event, said Irva Hertz-Picciotto, professor of public health sciences and director of the environmental health sciences center at the University of California at Davis, who was not part of the Camp Fire study.
“Often people go into high gear in the immediate aftermath, where the need to get into survival mode is intense, and all systems are on high alert, and that can last for months,” she said. “But at some point, it is too much to sustain, and people crash, often around six months where they may sink into a deep depression.”
Smoke particles that cause brain inflammation
Until recently, scientists focused more on how inhaling tiny smoke particles affected the cardiovascular and respiratory systems than the brain, said Kent Pinkerton, professor of pediatrics at the UC-Davis school of medicine, who studies how vapors, gases, particles and fibers affect respiratory, cardiovascular and neurological functions.
Breathing through the nose in stressful conditions is good, he said, because it serves as a filter, and “the particles will deposit in your nose, rather than deep in the lungs.” At the same time, though, cells responsible for the sense of smell can carry the particles to the brain and produce inflammation, Pinkerton said.
Inflammation – when it becomes chronic – can be dangerous.
“Wildfire exposure is so intense that it causes neuroinflammation on a rapidly occurring scale,” Weisskopf said. “The initial inflammation is actually a protective response – like when you have a fever or injury – but in some people, it can become chronic. The longer it lasts, the more likely you are to have more long-lasting effects.”
Also, toxic metals often are “hitchhiking” on these tiny particles, said Ray Dorsey, the professor of neurology at the University of Rochester.
“If you look at the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s, you find higher concentrations of these toxic metals: lead, iron from brake pads, platinum from catalytic converters,” he said. “They are probably bypassing the blood-brain barrier. The nose may be the front door in exploiting the normal protective mechanisms of the brain.”
The effects of trauma probably influence future brain disease, experts say. “PTSD is a major risk factor for later dementia, though it is years later, not next year,” said Paul E. Schulz, professor of neurology and director of the Neurocognitive Disorders Center at UTHealth Houston.
The effects of inhaling wildfire smoke, compounded by trauma, sets up a complicated mystery scientists need to explore further, Mishra said.
“There are all these jigsaw puzzle pieces,” she said. “The particulates enter the brain system and can cause inflammation. We know this can interact with emotions and cognitive systems in the brain. But in the context of wildfires, we don’t know yet how all this comes together.”
Nelson, the survivor who fled the Camp Fire with her pets, has advice for the people on Maui facing a challenging road ahead.
“Take it easy. This is a grief and loss process,” she said. “Sometimes you can go through all the phases of grief in one day. Sometimes it takes years.”
Protest broke out at a 55+ Florida community over skyrocketing home insurance premiums: ‘We have no choice, we have to sell’
Alena Botros – August 19, 2023
This week, hundreds of homeowners in a 55+ living community, known as Century Village, in Pembroke Pines, Fla., gathered together to protest an increase in their monthly housing fees due to skyrocketing insurance costs, as several insurers flee the state.
Homeowners were sent an email from Century Village that they’d have to pay an additional $100 to $200 a month due to “skyrocketing insurance premiums,” adding a potential special assessment for some units, according to NBC6, a local TV news outlet in South Florida that was first to report the incident. Footage shown in the TV segment shows several residents crowded together, visibly upset and shouting (although it’s unclear what exactly they’re saying). However, it seems that the protest escalated and police were called. Still, one resident told NBC6 reporter Laura Rodriguez that the increase in costs is forcing him to sell his home.
“So now we are over $700 a month that we are paying just in HOA fees, and they’re going to kick it up to $1,000 a month,” the resident told the reporter. “We have no choice, we have to sell. As a matter of fact, I just put my house on the market 10 minutes ago.”
Century Village did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Housing markets in Florida saw substantial increases in home prices during the pandemic, and in most cases are still seeing increases. That coupled with mortgage rates that have more than doubled, with the average 30-year fixed rate recently hitting a 20-year high, has deteriorated affordability. But now there’s a new force putting a strain on housing affordability, and that’s rising insurance costs.
Homeowners in Florida are paying the highest insurance premiums in the nation, with an average premium of $6,000 per year, according to Mark Friedlander, the Florida-based director of corporate communications for the Insurance Information Institute. To compare, the U.S. average $1,700 per year. And recently, several home insurers have either pulled out of the state, like Farmers Insurance, or have chosen to renew fewer policies, like AAA—and that’s making it more difficult for homeowners to find coverage, or even afford it, as Fortune’spreviously reported.
“Just in the last 18 months, 15 companies have stopped writing business in Florida. Three have voluntarily withdrawn—Farmers being the most recent—and seven companies have been declared insolvent,” Friedlander recently explained to Fortune, before AAA said it would reduce its presence in Florida, rather than pull out completely as Farmers Insurance announced its plan to do so.
There are several factors behind the state’s insurance exodus that range from claim fraud, to an increase in claims following recent hurricanes, to an increase in reinsurance rates. All of which, essentially raise costs for insurance companies, which in turn raises costs for policyholders. However, we’re seeing that some insurers are simply choosing to leave the state, and that only makes it harder for homeowners to find coverage, and makes that coverage more expensive.
Insurance concerns are already having an impact on Florida’s housing market, with a recent homebuilder survey showing that buyers’ concerns over the availability and affordability of insurance are somewhat slowing sales, which could potentially get worse.
Anyone who has spent a summer evening swatting away mosquitoes, or a summer day scratching mosquito bites, can agree: Mosquitoes stink. But the smells produced by humans are an important part of what draws mosquitoes to us.
In a scientific report published in May, scientists helped pinpoint the different chemicals in body odor that attract these insects by building an ice-rink size testing arena and pumping in the scents of different people.
Mosquitoes are part of the fly family, and most of the time, they feed on nectar. However, females preparing to produce eggs need a meal with extra protein: blood.
Best-case scenario, getting bitten will just leave you with an itchy red bump. But mosquito bites often turn deadly, thanks to parasites and viruses the insects transmit. One of the most dangerous of these diseases is malaria.
Malaria is a blood-borne disease caused by microscopic parasites that take up residence in red blood cells. When a mosquito bites a person infected with malaria, it sucks up the parasite along with the blood. After developing in the mosquito’s stomach, the parasite “will migrate to the salivary glands and then be spat back out into the skin of another human host when the mosquito blood-feeds again,” said Dr. Conor McMeniman, an assistant professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute in Baltimore.
Malaria has been eradicated in the United States in the past century thanks to window screens, air-conditioning and improvements to drainage systems where mosquitoes’ aquatic larvae can grow, but the disease remains a danger to much of the world.
“Malaria still accounts for more than 600,000 deaths per year, mostly in children under the age of 5 years, and also pregnant women,” said McMeniman, senior author of the study published in the journal Current Biology.
“It inflicts a lot of suffering around the world, and part of the motivation for this study was to try and really understand how mosquitoes that transmit malaria are finding humans.”
McMeniman, along with Bloomberg postdoctoral researchers and the study’s first authors, Drs. Diego Giraldo and Stephanie Rankin-Turner, focused on Anopheles gambiae, a species of mosquito found in sub-Saharan Africa. They partnered with Zambia’s Macha Research Trust, led by scientific director Dr. Edgar Simulundu.
“We were really motivated to try and develop a system where we could study the behavior of the African malaria mosquito in a naturalistic habitat, reflective of its native home in Africa,” McMeniman said. The researchers also wanted to compare the mosquitoes’ smell preferences across different humans, to observe the insects’ ability to track scents across distances of 66 feet (20 meters), and to study them during their most active hours, between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.
Researchers set up a screened facility the size of skating rink to help understand how mosquitoes that transmit malaria find humans. – Julien Adam/Macha Research Trust/Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute
To tick all these boxes, the researchers created a screened facility the size of a skating rink. Dotting the perimeter of the facility were six screened tents where study participants would sleep. Air from their tents, carrying the participants’ unique breath and body odor scents, was pumped through long tubes to the main facility onto absorbent pads, warmed and baited with carbon dioxide to mimic a sleeping human.
Hundreds of mosquitoes in the main 20-by-20-meter facility were then treated to a buffet of the sleeping subjects’ scents. Infrared cameras tracked the mosquitoes’ movement to the different samples. (The mosquitoes used in the study were not infected with malaria, and they couldn’t reach the sleeping humans.)
The researchers found what many who have been on a picnic would attest to: Some people attract more mosquitoes than others. What’s more, chemical analyses of air from the tents revealed the odor-causing substances behind the mosquitoes’ attraction, or lack thereof.
The mosquitoes were most attracted to airborne carboxylic acids, including butyric acid, a compound present in “stinky” cheeses such as Limburger. These carboxylic acids are produced by bacteria on human skin and tend not to be noticeable to us.
While carboxylic acids attracted the mosquitoes, the insects seemed to be deterred by another chemical called eucalyptol, which is present in plants. The researchers suspected that one sample with a high eucalyptol concentration might have been related to the diet of one of the participants.
Simulundu said that finding a correlation between the chemicals present in different people’s body odor and the mosquitoes’ attraction to those scents was “very interesting and exciting.”
“This finding opens up approaches for developing lures or repellents that can be used in traps to disrupt the host-seeking behavior of mosquitoes, thereby controlling malaria vectors in regions where the disease is endemic,” said Simulundu, a coauthor of the study.
Dr. Leslie Vosshall, a neurobiologist and vice president and chief scientific officer of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute who was not involved with the study, was similarly enthusiastic. “I think it’s a super exciting study,” she said. “It’s the first time that an experiment of this type has been done at this scale outside the lab.”
Vosshall researches another mosquito species that spreads dengue fever, Zika and chikungunya. In a study published in 2022 in the journal Cell, she and her colleagues found that this mosquito species also seeks out the scent of carboxylic acids produced by bacteria on human skin. The fact that these two different species respond to similar chemical cues is a good thing, she said, because that could make it easier to create repellents or traps for mosquitoes across the board.
The research might not have any immediate implications for avoiding bug bites at your next barbecue. (Vosshall said that even scrubbing with unscented soap doesn’t get rid of the natural scents that attract mosquitoes.) However, she noted that the new paper “gives us some really good clues about what mosquitoes are using to hunt us, and understanding what that is, is essential for us to come up with the next steps.”
Kate Golembiewski is a freelance science writer based in Chicago who geeks out about zoology, thermodynamics and death. She hosts the comedy talk show “A Scientist Walks Into a Bar.”
Chemical treatment to be deployed against invasive fish in Colorado River: Humpback Chub Protection
Associated Press – August 18, 2023
This undated photo provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows a humpback chub in the Colorado River basin in Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. The National Park Service will renew efforts to rid an area of the Colorado River in northern Arizona of invasive fish by killing them with a chemical treatment, the agency said Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. It’s the latest tactic in an ongoing struggle to keep non-native smallmouth bass and green sunfish at bay below the Glen Canyon Dam and to protect a threatened native fish, the humpback chub. (Travis Francis/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via AP, File)Juvenile smallmouth bass sit at a National Park Service laboratory near Page, Ariz., July 1, 2022. The National Park Service will renew efforts to rid an area of the Colorado River in northern Arizona of invasive fish by killing them with a chemical treatment, the agency said Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. It’s the latest tactic in an ongoing struggle to keep non-native smallmouth bass and green sunfish at bay below the Glen Canyon Dam and to protect a threatened native fish, the humpback chub. (Jeff Arnold/National Park Service via AP, File)
PAGE, Ariz. (AP) — The National Park Service will renew efforts to rid an area of the Colorado River in northern Arizona of invasive fish by killing them with a chemical treatment, the agency said Friday.
A substance lethal to fish but approved by federal environmental regulators called rotenone will be disseminated starting Aug. 26. It’s the latest tactic in an ongoing struggle to keep non-native smallmouth bass and green sunfish at bay below the Glen Canyon Dam and to protect a threatened native fish, the humpback chub.
The treatment will require a weekend closure of the Colorado River slough, a cobble bar area surrounding the backwater where the smallmouth bass were found and a short stretch up and downstream. Chemical substances were also utilized last year.
The effort will “be carefully planned and conducted to minimize exposure” to humans as well as “desirable fish species,” according to the National Park Service. An “impermeable fabric barrier” will be erected at the mouth of the slough to prevent crossover of water with the river.
Once the treatment is complete, another chemical will be released to dilute the rotenone, the park service said.
In the past, smallmouth bass were sequestered in Lake Powell behind Glen Canyon Dam, which had served as a barrier to them for years. But last summer, they were found in the river below the dam.
Due to climate change and drought, Lake Powell, a key Colorado River reservoir, dropped to historically low levels last year, making it no longer as much of an obstacle to the smallmouth bass. The predatory fish were able to approach the Grand Canyon, where the largest groups of the ancient and rare humpback chub remain.
Environmentalists have accused the federal government of failing to act swiftly. The Center for Biological Diversity pointed to data from the National Park Service released Wednesday showing the smallmouth bass population more than doubled in the past year. The group also said there still have been no timelines given on modifying the area below the dam.
“I’m afraid this bass population boom portends an entirely avoidable extinction event in the Grand Canyon,” said Taylor McKinnon, the Center’s Southwest director. “Losing the humpback chub’s core population puts the entire species at risk.”
Conservation groups also continue to criticize the 2021 decision to downgrade the humpback chub from endangered to threatened. At the time, federal authorities said the fish, which gets its name from a fleshy bump behind its head, had been brought back from the brink of extinction after decades of protections.
Gulf Coast officials are scrambling to prepare for two weather disasters to combine in deadly fashion
Rachel Ramirez, CNN – August 19, 2023
It’s been a sweltering summer for much of the US, with temperatures reaching new highs seemingly every day. And along the Gulf Coast, officials are now grappling with how to handle two potentially deadly disasters set to compound: a hurricane and extreme heat.
In New Orleans, this summer was the first time officials were forced to tap into their “rainy day” fund, which is typically meant for hurricane emergency response, to address heat emergencies.
“It’s really a new frontier for us,” Anna Nguyen, public information officer for New Orleans Homeland Security Emergency Preparedness, told CNN.
Last week, the city issued an emergency declaration for extreme heat, underscoring rising concerns about widespread power outages ahead of peak hurricane season. Without air conditioning and sufficient shelter capacity, the cascading effects of these dual disasters could be deadly for the most vulnerable people.
Hazards indirectly related to storms, like exposure to heat, kill nearly as many people as the storm itself, NOAA data shows. Nearly 22% of those so-called indirect deaths were caused by heat and generator misuse from 2013 to 2022. Experts have also said that extreme heat is a silent killer and can be a major contributing factor in the overall hurricane death toll.
Emergency response officials in major urban areas like Miami-Dade County, New Orleans and Houston — places that have endured blistering temperatures this summer — told CNN that they’ve had to rethink extreme weather.
“Climate change is functioning as a threat multiplier, and we’re seeing more and more often dual threats happening at once,” Christopher Dalbom, assistant director at the Tulane Center for Environmental Law, told CNN. “Anybody who’s been without power during hurricane season in the Gulf knows that even without an official emergency declaration for excessive heat, it gets pretty excessive.”
Cascading effects
Extreme heat has baked the Gulf Coast for weeks this summer. – Christiana Botic/The New York Times/Redux
The Gulf Coast is no stranger to hurricanes, but consecutive days with temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit are a new experience for many.
An intense hurricane and extreme heat could be a deadly combination because storm destruction and widespread power outages would leave people exposed and vulnerable to heat, said Nikisha Williams, managing director of collective impact at The Miami Foundation.
“If Miami experienced extreme heat at the same time, portions of our community would have no relief for what could be days or weeks,” Williams told CNN. “This is extremely dangerous for the most vulnerable populations such as children and the elderly.”
Texas is no different. Over the past few years, Houston has endured devastating hurricanes, a deadly winter freeze, drought, forest fires and now oppressive heat. Officials there are still navigating how to properly prepare for the rapidly changing extreme weather to avoid mass casualties.
“Climate change has really been a huge eye-opener for us,” Thomas Muñoz, emergency management coordinator for Houston’s Office of Emergency Management, told CNN. “It’s so unpredictable now, I can say that. We’ve never seen record-breaking days like this.”
With dozens of record-high temperatures being set across Florida since the start of June, coupled with brutal humidity that has made the heat even more dangerous, Miami-Dade County officials have been scrambling to prepare for the day that extreme heat might combine with a landfalling hurricane.
Pete Gomez, director of emergency management in Miami-Dade County, said the county has been ramping up emergency management and disaster recovery efforts, especially when it comes to addressing both storm threats and extreme heat.
Residents gather at recreation center after Hurricane Ida in New Orleans on Sept. 3, 2021. – Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg/Getty Images
In 2021, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava appointed the nation’s first ever chief heat officer with the goal of raising the public’s awareness about the dangers of extreme heat to the same level as hurricanes.
Since then, she has expanded initiatives to prepare for a dual-disaster scenario. The county was able to secure funding to install air conditioning units in some affordable housing that did not have any. Gomez said all shelters have backup generator systems to keep residents cool, and they’ve also established relationships with the county’s homeless trust and nonprofit groups, including The Miami Foundation.
“That’s the revision we need so we can meet the needs of the community,” Gomez said. “Part of that need is preparedness, getting the message out, and making sure that everything is done to try to minimize the impact of these events as much as possible.”
But Williams, who was born and raised in Miami, said the county is still not fully prepared due to rapidly changing demographics and the need for more widespread messaging and education on living in a region prone to climate disasters.
“I feel like I’m betraying my city, but the reality is we’re not prepared,” she said. “Every storm brings something incredibly different if I’m being honest. There’s always something new that we didn’t think of. And so, even in the best of situations, we probably will not be 100% prepared.”
“But I think we are more prepared today than we were before,” Williams added.
Lessons learned
Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust representatives distribute bottles of water and shelter information during a heat wave in Miami, Florida, on July 25, 2023. – Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Emergency management officials from New Orleans and Houston say they are well-equipped and prepared for both disasters to happen, despite the unprecedented nature of how climate change has recently been taking shape.
In Houston, Muñoz said they have expanded their outreach, including revising messaging about resources available in the event of a disaster. They are not only deploying more languages like American sign language to accommodate the city’s diverse population, but they are also fostering partnerships with nonprofit groups and grassroots organizations.
“The best thing for us that I’ve learned is just that constant communication with people throughout the year and then when we start the process of seeing something, we do a lot of calling like what do y’all need? What I do we have issues?” Muñoz said. “It’s like we are constantly looking at the what ifs and then we work towards that, and of course, we capture the lessons learned and how we can do better.”
For New Orleans, Nguyen said that they’re continuously taking what they have learned from previous storms and are translating it to heat emergencies. Since Hurricane Katrina, she said officials have built robust relationships with the community in order to work toward preparedness and quick recovery.
“New Orleans has been battle-tested,” Nguyen said. “There’s always going to be room for improvement, that’s the nature of this work — you can always do things better, but it’s how do we take lessons learned and apply it to what’s in front of us now.”
Brita water filter company accused of false advertising
Dorany Pineda – August 19, 2023
Water filters on an assembly line at Brita’s factory in Taunusstein, Germany. (AFP via Getty Images)
A lawsuit filed against the maker of some of the nation’s most popular water filtration systems has accused the Brita company of falsely advertising that its products remove or reduce hazardous contaminants from tap water.
The proposed class-action lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, claims that deceptive advertising has led customers to falsely believe that Brita products filter such contaminants as arsenic, nitrate, hexavalent chromium and certain PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” from tap water.
Brita is owned by Clorox Co., which is headquartered in Oakland. Clorox released a statement Wednesday saying it was still reviewing the complaint, but looked forward to “defending ourselves vigorously.”
“Brita takes the transparency of the variety of water filtration options we offer seriously,” the statement said. “Our products include a standard filtration option that improves taste and odor of tap water and is certified to reduce identified contaminants as communicated. For those consumers looking for water filters certified to reduce PFOS or PFOA, the Brita Elite pour-through and Brita Hub are both certified to reduce PFOS/PFOA, as well as lead and other identified contaminants.”
The lawsuit was filed by Los Angeles County resident Nicholas Brown, who is currently the sole plaintiff. Brown purchased a Brita water pitcher and standard filter for about $15 in 2022 after reading the product label and believing the device would filter contaminants to below lab detectable limits, the lawsuit said.
“Unfortunately, the Products are not nearly as effective as defendant deliberately leads people to believe, causing consumers to overpay millions and forego more effective alternatives,” the lawsuit said. “In this way, defendant has not only bilked millions of dollars from consumers in ill-gotten gains, but Defendant has put the health and welfare of millions of consumers and their families at risk.”
At the heart of the lawsuit is the basic and fundamental human right to clean and safe drinking water, said the plaintiff’s lawyers. They argue that Brita products, which are widely available and affordable, are a staple in the homes of students, renters, working families and others who can’t spare the price of high-quality filters for their taps.
The company’s marketing “creates the illusion of safety and protection for people and their families,” said Ryan Clarkson, managing partner of the Clarkson Law Firm in Malibu. “And that’s really the big problem that we need to solve here. When people are running their tap water with PFAS through these Brita water filters, it’s just a superfluous act. It does nothing whatsoever as it relates to chemicals like PFAS.”
PFAS, or per- and polyfluorinated substances, are a group of thousands of manufactured chemicals that have been widely used for decades in products that resist heat, oil and water. They can be found in such everyday items as nonstick cookware, dental floss, period underwear, fast food boxes, water-repellent clothing and firefighting foam.
Known as forever chemicals because they don’t degrade naturally in the environment, PFAS have made their way into rivers, lakes, aquifers and people’s blood streams. Exposure to high levels of some PFAS has been linked to adverse health effects such as decreased fertility, increased risk of high cholesterol, obesity, high blood pressure, certain cancers, and liver and immune-system damage.
The lawsuit accuses the company of violating California laws concerning unfair competition, false advertising, breach of contract and others. It seeks damages and other remedies.
Depending on the type of filter, Brita products are certified to reduce or remove contaminants such as chlorine, lead, mercury, asbestos, some particulates, zinc, copper and select pesticides, herbicides and pharmaceuticals, according to its website.
The lawsuit comes at a time of increasing concern over drinking water contamination.
Researchers recently estimated that at least 45% of the nation’s tap water is contaminated with one or more PFAS chemicals, and that drinking-water exposures may be more common in urban areas across Central and Southern California than in other regions.
The Environmental Protection Agency plans to begin regulating several types of PFAS in drinking water and has proposed strict limits on two common ones — PFOA and PFOS — and L.A. County supervisors supported a proposal last month to investigate PFAS levels in drinking water.
Arsenic and nitrate, which are linked to certain cancers and other health issues, are also widespread in parts of California. According to state data, 22% of primary maximum contaminant level (MCL) violations in public water systems last year were for arsenic, and 22% were for nitrate, the highest of any contaminants. MCLs are health-protective drinking-water standards.
The lawsuit argues that claims on the labels and packages of certain Brita water filters, pitchers and dispensers — such as “Cleaner, Great-Tasting Water for Over [20, 25, or 30] Years,” “The #1 FILTER” and “Reduces 3X Contaminants” — are false and misleading. Other claims like “Better water for you. Better water for the planet” and “Fresh filter = Fresh water” reinforce consumer beliefs that the products remove or reduce to below lab detection limits common hazardous contaminants, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit also claims that numerous Brita products have not been registered with the California State Water Resources Control Board since they’ve been marketed and sold, and that none of their products have been certified to remove or reduce health-hazardous contaminants, making it unlawful to market and sell them in the Golden State.
“What the case seeks is really two things,” Clarkson said. “First, greater transparency for consumers so they understand what these water filters are capable of filtering out and what they are not capable of filtering out. We don’t believe that the advertising and labeling of these products communicate in a transparent and effective way to consumers what the products can and can’t do.
“And secondly, we’re looking for compensation to all purchasers of these products who have relied upon the products to fulfill a promise that they simply haven’t fulfilled,” he added. The class period will go back to Aug. 16, 2019.
Hurricane Hilary threatens ‘catastrophic and life-threatening’ flooding in Mexico and California
Ignacio Martinez and Julie Watson – August 19, 2023
This Friday, Aug. 18, 2023, 1:10 p.m. EDT satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows Hurricane Hilary, right, off Mexico’s Pacific coast. It grew rapidly to Category 4 strength and could reach Southern California as the first tropical storm there in 84 years, causing “significant and rare impacts” including extensive flooding. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said a tropical storm watch has been issued for Southern California, the first time it has ever done that. (NOAA via AP)Seal Beach resident Tom Ostrom, walks past a home protected with sandbags in Seal Beach, Calif., Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. Hurricane Hilary is churning off Mexico’s Pacific coast as a powerful Category 4 storm threatening to unleash torrential rains on the mudslide-prone border city of Tijuana before heading into Southern California as the first tropical storm there in 84 years. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)Cal Fire Firefighter-Paramedic Capt. Tyler Williams checks the sandbags set outside of his garage in Seal Beach, Calif., Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. Hurricane Hilary is churning off Mexico’s Pacific coast as a powerful Category 4 storm threatening to unleash torrential rains on the mudslide-prone border city of Tijuana before heading into Southern California as the first tropical storm there in 84 years. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)Seal Beach resident Tom Ostrom, right, sits along an empty water-pipe to be used to pump sea water back to the Pacific Ocean as homes are protected by sand berms in Seal Beach, Calif., Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. Hurricane Hilary is churning off Mexico’s Pacific coast as a powerful Category 4 storm threatening to unleash torrential rains on the mudslide-prone border city of Tijuana before heading into Southern California as the first tropical storm there in 84 years. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)A couple walks along berms in Seal Beach, Calif., Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. Officials in Southern California were also re-enforcing sand berms, built to protect low-lying coastal communities against winter surf. Hurricane Hilary is churning off Mexico’s Pacific coast as a powerful Category 4 storm threatening to unleash torrential rains on the mudslide-prone border city of Tijuana before heading into Southern California as the first tropical storm there in 84 years. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico (AP) — Hurricane Hilary headed for Mexico’s Baja California on Saturday as the U.S. National Hurricane Center predicted “catastrophic and life-threatening flooding” for the peninsula and for the southwestern United States, where it was forecast to cross the border as a tropical storm on Sunday.
Officials as far north as Los Angeles scrambled to get the homeless off the streets, set up shelters and prepare for evacuations.
Hilary is expected to plow into Mexico’s Baja peninsula on Saturday night and then surge northward and enter the history books as the first tropical storm to hit Southern California in 84 years.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center issued tropical storm and potential flood warnings for a wide swath of Southern California from the Pacific coast to interior mountains and deserts. Officials talked of evacuation plans for California’s Catalina Island.
“I don’t think any of us — I know me particularly — never thought I’d be standing here talking about a hurricane or a tropical storm,” said Janice Hahn, chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
After rapidly gaining power early Friday, Hilary slowed some later in the day but remained a major Category 3 hurricane early Saturday with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph (205 kph), down from 145 mph (230 kph).
Early on Saturday, the storm was centered about 235 miles (375 kilometers) west of the southern tip of the Baja peninsula. It was moving north-northwest at 16 mph (26 kph) and was expected to turn more toward the north and pick up speed.
The latest forecast track pointed to Hilary making landfall along a sparsely populated area of the Baja peninsula at a point about 200 miles (330 kilometers) south of the Pacific port city of Ensenada.
It is then expected to continue northward up the peninsula, raising fears that its heavy rains could cause dangerous flooding in the border city of Tijuana, where many homes in the city of 1.9 million cling precariously to steep hillsides.
Mayor Montserrat Caballero Ramirez said the city was setting up four shelters in high-risk zones and warning people in risky zones.
“We are a vulnerable city being on one of the most visited borders in the world and because of our landscape,” she said.
Concern was rising in the U.S., too.
The National Park Service closed Joshua Tree National Park and Mojave National Preserve to keep people from becoming stranded amid flooding. Cities across the region, including in Arizona, were offering sandbags to safeguard properties against floodwaters. Major League Baseball rescheduled three Sunday games in Southern California, moving them to Saturday as part of split-doubleheaders,
Deputies with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department took to the road to urge homeless people living in riverbeds to seek shelter. Authorities in the city were arranging food, cots and shelters for people who needed them.
SpaceX delayed the launch of a satellite-carrying rocket from a base on California’s central coast until at least Monday. The company said conditions in the Pacific could make it difficult for a ship to recover the rocket booster.
President Joe Biden said the Federal Emergency Management Agency had pre-positioned staff and supplies in the region.
“I urge everyone, everyone in the path of this storm, to take precautions and listen to the guidance of state and local officials,” Biden told reporters Friday at Camp David, where he is meeting with the leaders of Japan and South Korea.
Officials in Southern California were re-enforcing sand berms, built to protect low-lying coastal communities against winter surf, like in Huntington Beach, which dubs itself as “Surf City USA.”
In nearby Newport Beach, Tanner Atkinson waited in a line of vehicles for free sandbags at a city distribution point.
“I mean a lot of people here are excited because the waves are gonna get pretty heavy,” Atkinson said. “But I mean, it’s gonna be some rain, so usually there’s some flooding and the landslides and things like that.”
Some schools in Cabo San Lucas were being prepared as temporary shelters, and in La Paz, the picturesque capital of Baja California Sur state on the Sea of Cortez, police patrolled closed beaches to keep swimmers out of the whipped-up surf. Schools were shut down in five municipalities.
It was increasingly likely that Hilary would reach California on Sunday while still at tropical storm strength, though widespread rain was expected to begin as early as Saturday, the National Weather Service’s San Diego office said.
Hurricane officials said the storm could bring heavy rainfall to the southwestern United States, dumping 3 to 6 inches (8 to 15 centimeters) in places, with isolated amounts of up to 10 inches (25 centimeters), in portions of southern California and southern Nevada.
“Two to three inches of rainfall in Southern California is unheard of” for this time of year, said Kristen Corbosiero, a University at Albany atmospheric scientist who specializes in Pacific hurricanes. “That’s a whole summer and fall amount of rain coming in probably 6 to 12 hours.”
The region could face once-in-a-century rains and there is a good chance Nevada will break its all-time rainfall record, said meteorologist Jeff Masters of Yale Climate Connections and a former government in-flight hurricane meteorologist.
Watson reported from San Diego. Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein in Washington, Maria Verza and Mark Stevenson in Mexico City, John Antczak in Los Angeles, and Eugene Garcia in Newport Beach, California, contributed to this report.
These parts of California could get a year’s rain in a few days thanks to Hurricane Hilary
Grace Toohey, Hayley Smith, Rong-Gong Lin II – August 18, 2023
Surf roils off Medano Beach at a Los Cabos resort in Baja California on Friday. (Alfredo Estrella / AFP via Getty Images)
Some areas of Southern California and southern Nevada could see a year’s worth of rain in the coming days as Hurricane Hilary arrives.
Historic flooding could hit a wide swath of Southern California and the Las Vegas area, especially in San Bernardino and Inyo counties, with Death Valley and the Morongo Basin expected to see the most major flooding.
Hilary is likely to have weakened to a tropical storm by the time it leaves Mexico and enters California. But officials are sounding the alarm for potential flooding.
Everyone “should prepare for the potential for significant flash flooding. This is not the time to wait to prepare; this forecast is unlikely to improve,” said the National Weather Service in Las Vegas, which also issues forecasts for Death Valley and Morongo Valley.
Some areas could even see as much as a year’s worth of rain in a 24-hour period Sunday — and if not then, over the next few days. “This will not be a constant rainfall, but rather several rounds of moderate/heavy rainfall,” from Friday through Monday, the weather service said.
“Once impacts begin in your areas, they will likely worsen as we head into next week,” forecasters said. Sometimes the rain “could be slowly compounding. Other times, it could be flash flooding. Not much time between rounds of rain for conditions to improve.”
Other desert areas are also expected to receive at least a year’s worth of rain during the storm, officials with the National Weather Service said.
Palm Springs and Yucca Valley both average 4 to 5 inches of rainfall per year, but the forecast shows a deluge of 4 to 7 inches falling between Saturday and Monday, according to Elizabeth Adams, a meteorologist with the weather service in San Diego.
“The amount of moisture we’re getting is just unbelievable,” Adams said. “The rain rates could potentially be really extreme as well — over an inch or 2 inches of rain in an hour will be possible.”
Even higher rainfall totals of 6 to 10 inches are possible along the east-facing desert slopes of the Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego County mountains, Adams said.
She advised residents in the storm’s path to monitor forecast updates and ensure they have multiple methods of receiving warnings, including wireless emergency alerts, weather apps and local TV, radio and news stations.
In Yucca Valley, officials are warning residents to take precautions and avoid unnecessary travel, as access to some local roads may be limited.
“As the ability to travel may be reduced over the next two days, residents are reminded to keep a supply of necessary provisions and medications on hand,” Yucca Valley officials said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Be sure to bring pets inside. Never use generators, outdoor heating or cooking equipment indoors.”
The National Weather Service office in Phoenix, which issues forecasts for portions of southeastern California, said it’s likely the storm will bring “significant and rare (and potentially destructive) impacts.”
Current models show moisture anomalies that are “off the charts,” the agency wrote in its latest forecast — “and almost unbelievably more extreme than previous iterations. Essentially every standardized field measure is pegged at a climatological extreme for this time of year at multiple time scales.”
The rains expected with Hilary are rare and bring a “life-threatening” risk of flash floods from Baja California to southern Nevada.
A tropical storm watch is in effect across much of southwestern California, from the California-Mexico border into parts of Los Angeles County, something the National Hurricane Center said is a first for this area.
A watch indicates that tropical storm conditions — meaning sustained winds of more than 39 mph — are possible within 48 hours, according to the hurricane center.
‘Life-threatening flash flooding’
While high winds are creating the unusual tropical storm conditions, officials continue to emphasize that rain remains the greatest concern.
“This could [bring] rare and life-threatening flash flooding in the heaviest areas of rainfall. That is especially going to be prevalent Sunday evening through Monday morning,” said Elizabeth Adams, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego.
A high-risk warning for excessive rainfall was issued for much of inland Southern California — from the San Bernardino Mountains through the Coachella Valley and down into the Anza Borrego Desert — indicating the high probability for flash flooding Sunday and Monday.
The warning was issued for the first time in more than a decade for the low deserts east of the Southern California mountains, which are typically the drier-facing slopes, Adams said.
Rainfall is expected as early as Saturday morning for the Southland’s mountains and deserts, continuing through Monday — with eastern-facing mountains likely to see the most extreme amounts of rain, from 6 to 10 inches, and up to a foot in some isolated areas. Three to 6 inches of rain will be expected across the deserts.
Precipitation will move into the coasts and valleys, including the Inland Empire, likely by late Saturday, Adams said, where 2 to 4 inches will be expected through Monday.
According to the National Weather Service, Big Bear Lake, Julian, Idyllwild, and Mt. Laguna could get up to 7 inches of rain between Saturday and Monday. The Coachella Valley, including Palm Springs, could see up to 5 inches. Hemet, San Bernardino, Hesperia and Victorville could see up to 4 inches.
Coastal areas
High surf (5-9 feet)
Strong winds
Dangerous rip currents
Coastal flooding/beach erosion
Dangerous conditions for south- and southeast-facing harbors
Catalina Island could see hazardous winds and reduced visibility
Deserts and mountains
Intense rainfall in mountains, more than 10 inches in isolated areas
Coachella Valley could see up to 5 inches of rain
Flash flooding possible in some areas
Five to 7 inches of rain possible in Wrightwood, Big Bear and parts of Imperial County
Study sounds alarms about collapse of crucial ‘conveyor belt’ ocean current system: ‘There is still large uncertainty’
Leo Collis – August 17, 2023
A new study has forecast a system of ocean currents crucial to the stability of our climate could collapse by the middle of the century, with more notable shifts estimated between 2025 and 2095.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, takes warm water from the tropics to the North Atlantic (and cold water south), but climate change could soon lead to it breaking down, resulting in a number of weather-related issues across the globe.
What’s happening?
Research published in the journal Nature Communications has warned that the collapse of the AMOC could occur sooner than expected because of climate change that is shown to be human-caused.
The AMOC is described as the “conveyor belt” for ocean water and air in a USA Today report, which also notes how warm, salty water from the tropics heads north, passing along the Gulf Stream off the U.S. East Coast. The current then cools in the North Atlantic and travels south.
This natural phenomenon increases temperatures in northern Europe by a few degrees while bringing cold water to North America’s coast.
Its potential collapse is described as a potential “tipping point” that could lead to significant shifts in our weather systems and climate that will bring notable challenges worldwide.
Why is the possible collapse of the AMOC so concerning?
Some of the concerns that could result from the AMOC’s collapse, as explained by USA Today, include an ice age in Europe (other outlets mentionsimilarities to past ice ages), sea-level rise in Boston and New York City, and the strengthening of hurricanes and storms impacting the East Coast of the United States.
“There is still large uncertainty where the tipping point of the AMOC is, but the new study adds to the evidence that it is much closer than we thought just a few years ago,” climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf told the publication.
What can I do to help prevent the AMOC’s collapse?
Peter Ditlevsen, co-author of the study, told USA Today, “Our result underscores the importance of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible.”
With that in mind, any effort to reduce our reliance on dirty energy will help.
The U.S. government announced new records for clean energy deployment in 2021, with solar- and wind-powered projects providing enough energy to power 10 million homes.
But generating clean energy at home is also becoming increasingly achievable thanks to improving technology, availability, and cheaper options.
Portable solar panels are one of the latest trends that can help you to create clean energy at home or when you’re out and about and lessen your reliance on gas, coal, and oil.
