More than 60 people were hurt, including 32 with life-threatening injuries, in a fire in a Bronx apartment building on Sunday morning in what officials described as one of the city’s worst fires in recent memory.
“The numbers are horrific,” Mayor Eric Adams said at a news conference on Sunday afternoon, adding, “This is going to be one of the worst fires that we have witnessed during modern times.”
The fire started just before 11 a.m. in a duplex apartment on the second and third floors of the building, on East 181st Street, according to the Fire Department. Firefighters arrived within three minutes and encountered smoke that extended the entire height of the 19-story building, said the fire commissioner, Daniel A. Nigro.
He added that “the smoke conditions in this building were unprecedented,” and that victims had suffered from severe smoke inhalation.
“We expect there to be numerous fatalities but we don’t know yet,” Commissioner Nigro said, adding that many people had been trapped in their apartments.
Crews entering the building found victims “on every floor” and were taking them out in “cardiac and respiratory arrest,” he said.
A total of 63 people were injured. The 32 with life-threatening injuries were taken to five Bronx hospitals. Roughly 200 firefighters battled the blaze, officials said.
The cause of the fire was not immediately clear on Sunday. Commissioner Nigro said the door to the apartment where the fire started was left open, which helped fuel the fire and allowed the smoke to spread. “We’ve spread the word, ‘close the door, close the door,’” to keep a fire contained, he said.
The 120-unit building, at 333 East 181st Street near Tiebout Avenue, was built in 1972, according to city records.
About 25 windows facing Webster Avenue were blown out. Sheets hung from some of the windows, billowing in the wind.
Officials said the fire called to mind the fire at the Happy Land nightclub in 1990 in the Bronx, which killed 87 people. The club, which operated illegally, had no sprinklers, and several exits were blocked off with roll-down security shutters.
That fire was set deliberately by Julio Gonzalez, who had gotten into an argument with his girlfriend who worked as a ticket taker and coat checker at the club. A bouncer had kicked Mr. Gonzalez out of the club. He returned with a dollar’s worth of gasoline, poured it across the club’s only entrance, and ignited it.
The deadliest fire in the city’s history was in 1911, at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in Lower Manhattan, where 146 people died. All but 23 were young women. The fire helped touch off demands for improved safety conditions in factories.
Chelsia Rose Marcius and Eduardo Medina contributed reporting.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) on Sunday spoke out against measures included in proposed federal voting rights legislation ahead of a visit from President BidenJoe BidenAre we investing trillions on what matters? Biden eulogizes Reid as a fighter ‘for the America we all love’ at memorial service Fox News tops ratings for coverage on Jan. 6 anniversary events MORE and Vice President Harris to his state to campaign for those very laws.
Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Raffensperger praised Georgia’s current voting laws and suggested that a constitutional amendment be made stipulating that only American citizens be permitted to vote in elections, pointing to some cities like New York City that have recently moved to allow non-citizens to vote in local elections.
“So that’s another, you know, solid common sense federal reform measure if they really want to get serious about election reform,” Raffensperger said, appearing to refer to Biden and Harris.
Host Margaret Brennan pointed out that one of the bills that Biden and Harris are promoting — the Freedom to Vote Act — also includes standardized ID requirements for voting such as having voters present documents like utility bills.
“It does not have photo ID and photo ID is the most secure way of … making sure that you can identify who the voter is and I think that’s very important,” Raffensperger said. “And then they also want same day registration and that’s just, you know, pretty difficult for any election official to manage. And I think that undermines trust in elections.”
Brennan also noted Georgia’s history of racial discrimination and how federal oversight was required when changing election laws in the state up until 2013. She asked Raffensperger if he saw any merit in requiring federal oversight in states with a history of racial discrimination.
“Georgia was so far ahead. We’re not where we were in 1965,” he said. “I think that we have shown that Georgia has fair and honest elections. We have record registration, we have record turnout. Anyone wants to vote in Georgia has tremendous opportunities to vote early, vote with no excuse absentee voting with photo ID and then also show up on election day.”
At about 10:15 a.m., Brown County received a report that a large chunk of ice had broken from the shoreline off Point Comfort and that there were multiple people stranded on it, according to a news release from the sheriff’s office.
In less than two hours, all the people who were stranded on the floating ice were rescued with no injuries, according to the release.
“It is believed a barge that had gone through the Bay shortly before the ice breakage may have contributed to the destabilization of the ice,” the sheriff’s office said.
The floating ice chunk was about a mile from shore by the end of the rescue and had floated about three quarters of a mile during the rescue, the sheriff’s office said.
“Although the chunk of ice remained fairly stable, its condition was deteriorating rapidly (and) cracking up as it moved with the open water pounding at the edge of it,” the office added.
Shane Nelson told CNN affiliate WLUK he and Robert Verhagen had been out ice fishing for the first time when they heard a loud noise.
“It sounded like almost somebody fired a gun out there,” Nelson said. “We thought it was interesting. We got out of our shanty, looked and … a couple people were yelling that the ice was separating.”
CNN’s Laura James and Eric Levenson contributed to this report.
The rule was repealed by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who was later sued over the decision. The Biden administrationasked a judge late last year to keep the repeal in place while it undertakes a monthslong process to write a new version.
It’s a move that hassurprised some student loanborrower advocates.
“If the Biden administrationis serious about protecting students, it makes no sense that they’re continuing to fight them in court,” said Aaron Ament, president of the National Student Legal Defense Network, which filed the lawsuit in 2020.
“They can help right now, all they have to do is stop defending Betsy DeVos’ illegal decisions,” added Ament, who previously served as an attorney for the US Department of Education under the Obama administration.
For-profit colleges have helped fuel America’s student debt problems. About 11% of for-profit college students default, compared with 7% of students who attend public colleges and about 5% who attend private, nonprofit colleges, according to the latest data from the Department of Education.
Many for-profits’ programs don’t lead to higher-paying jobs, leaving some students struggling to pay off their debt. The Department of Education has found that several for-profit schools defrauded their students and, as a result, it hasforgiven the debt of thousands of those borrowers — a move that delivers debt relief but also costs taxpayers money.
Known as “gainful employment,” the rule aimed to identify low-performing for-profit colleges and certificate programs at nonprofit colleges — meaning those whose graduates had high student loan payments relative to their income. Those that fell short of the government’s standards would lose access to federal funding. As a result, their students would be blocked from borrowing federal student loans and receiving other types of federal financial aid.
DeVos repealed the rule in 2019, arguing that it failed to account for factors that could affect a graduate’s earnings other than program quality. She also criticized the rule for holding for-profit colleges to a higher standard than nonprofit institutions.
Biden administration wants to rewrite the rule
The Department of Education intends to put a new rule in place that sets standards around gainful employment. In order to do so, it’s beginning a formal rule-making process as soon as next week. The process, known as negotiated rule-making, includes a series of meetings followed by a public comment period that typically takes months.
“We are committed to restoring a strong gainful employment rule as quickly as possible,” said Education Department Under Secretary James Kvaal in a statement sent to CNN.
“While we respect and appreciate outside feedback on the best route to that goal, our judgment is that focusing on the regulatory process will produce the best, most durable rule to protect students,” added Kvaal, who played a significant role in writing the first gainful employment rule.
But while the department goes through the rule-making process, the student protections provided by the previous gainful employment regulationwon’t be in place, allowing people to potentially enroll in risky college programs in the meantime.
In a court document, Kvaal argued that, from an operations perspective, it would likely take at least a year, if not longer, to fully implement the former rule. It’s unclear if that could happen before a new rule takes effect, he wrote.
If the previous rule is reinstated, the department anticipates it would have to fight new lawsuits, according to court documents.
Targeting for-profit colleges
Other actions taken by the Biden administration have suggested it intends to target the for-profit college sector. The Federal Trade Commission, for example, sent 70 for-profit colleges a letter in October, putting them on notice that the agency plans to crack down on any false promises they make about their graduates’ job and earnings prospects.
Plus, a Biden-backed plan to expand Pell grants — a type of federal aid awarded to students with exceptional financial need—would make for-profit college students ineligible for the money.The plan was included in the Democrats’ Build Back Better legislation, which has stalled in the Senate.
“I do think it’s a priority for them, but I think they could do more. It was a little surprising that they didn’t put gainful employment back into effect,” said Carolyn Fast, an attorney and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, where she works on higher education policy.
“The timeline for getting a new rule in place is pretty long. It seems to make sense to have the old rule in place in the meantime to make sure students aren’t enrolling in programs that aren’t going to meet the standards,” she said.
How the rule was intended to work
The gainful employment rule required for-profit colleges and career certificate programs at nonprofit colleges to post debt-to-earnings ratios, proving that their students could find good-paying jobs upon graduating. If the average ratio did not meet government standards for two out of three consecutive years, the school’s federal funding would be revoked.
Ratings were published in 2017, finding more than 800 programs that failed to meet the department’s standards. But DeVos revoked the rule before any of the institutions lost federal funding.
The rule still had some effect by disclosing programs whose students are saddled with debt they can’t afford. A graduate theater program at Harvard University, for example, froze enrollment after getting a failing grade in the government’s report.
Canceling debt vs. tackling college affordability
To date, the Biden administration has canceled about $2.8 billionin student loan debt owed by students who were defrauded by their for-profit colleges, according to the Department of Education. It did so by reversing a DeVos policy that limited the amount of relief due to defrauded borrowers and by determining that 115,000 former students of ITT Technical Institute, a now-defunct for-profit, were eligible for automatic forgiveness.
But those actions offer relief only after someone has been defrauded. The gainful employment rule attempts to prevent the problem from happening in the first place, protecting students from taking out debt that they won’t be able to afford to pay back.
“Instead of cleaning up problems on the back end, they could clean up things on the front end, too, and save a lot of people from heartache,” Fast said.
The California Department of Public Health issued new guidance allowing hospitals and health networks to force COVID-postive healthcare workers to continue working if they are asymptomatic.
“The department is providing temporary flexibility to help hospitals and emergency services providers respond to an unprecedented surge and staffing shortages. Hospitals have to exhaust all other options before resorting to this temporary tool. Facilities and providers using this tool, should have asymptomatic COVID-19 positive workers interact only with COVID-19 positive patients to the extent possible,” the health department said in a statement.
The health department issued the guidance Saturday, and outlines that healthcare workers don’t have to isolate or test negative and can immediately return to work if they are asymptomatic.
Nurse is comforting a covid patient at the ICU (iStock)
WEEKS AFTER MINNESOTA NURSES WARN OF STAFFING CRISIS, MAYO CLINIC FIRES 700 UNVACCINATED WORKERS
The guidance is in effect until Feb. 1 and comes as the omicron variant of the virus spikes across the nation. Positive healthcare workers will need to wear N-95 respirator masks.
The announcement sparked outrage from the SEIU, as well as other health officials and workers in the state.
“Healthcare workers and patients need the protection of clear rules guided by strong science. Allowing employers to bring back workers who may still be infectious is one of the worst ideas I have heard during this pandemic, and that’s really saying something,” Bob Schoonover, President of SEIU California and Executive Director of SEIU California, said according to CBS Sacramento.
TERMINATION OF UNVACCINATED HEALTH CARE WORKERS BACKFIRES AS BIDEN PLEDGES HELP AMID COVID SURGE
Staffing issues have plagued hospitals across the country as the omicron variant of the virus spikes, including in California where vaccine mandates were put into effect last year requiring health workers to get vaccinated or face termination. Health giant Kaiser Permanente suspended more than 2,000 unvaccinated employees in October and said those who still have not been vaccinated face termination this month.
The president of the California Nurses Association, Sandy Reding, said the health department’s move will put patients at risk.
“We are very concerned,” she said, according to NBC Bay Area. “If you have health care workers who are COVID positive care for vulnerable populations, we can spread the COVID virus inside the hospital as well.”
“If we are going to set up for the surge, let’s set up protocols to have transmission reduced. Which means not have COVID positive people come to work,” Reding added.
But to Dr. George Rutherford, professor of Epidemiology at University of California San Francisco, the move is not unprecedented.
RHODE ISLAND WENT FROM FIRING UNVACCINATED HEALTH CARE WORKERS TO ALLOWING THE COVID-POSITIVE TO WORK
“This is about having infected people taking care of infected people. We did this with Ebola in South Africa. We’ve done it before. It’s not the first play option in our playbook. I think staffing issues are such that it led the state to put this guidance out,” he said, according to NBC Bay Area.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment on the guidance.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, left, receives a Moderna COVID-19 vaccine booster shot from California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly at Asian Health Services in Oakland, Calif., Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. In a letter to health providers dated Tuesday, Nov. 9. 2021, Dr. Tomas Aragon, the State Public Health Officer, told providers they should “not turn a patient away who requesting a booster” if they are age 18 and up and it has been six months since they had their second Moderna or Pfizer vaccine or two months since their single Johnson & Johnson shot. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File) (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
Staffing issues have been reported in various parts of the state, including in San Diego. The CEO of Scripps Health in San Diego said last week that six to eight health care workers are calling the hospital per hour to report they have COVID.
Young mother of small hospitalized girl talking to doctor in hospital, midsection. (iStock)
“In the emergency departments, we do have patients that are literally stacked up 20 to 30 in some of the hospitals, waiting for an open bed that will hopefully be available when we discharge patients,” Chris Van Gorder, president and CEO of Scripps Health, told NBC 7 San Diego
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Rhode Island rolled out a similar policy this month, opening the option for COVID-positive health care workers to continue working if they have mild symptoms or are asymptomatic, and if their hospital is facing a staffing crisis. The update came after the CDC’s revision on quarantine and isolation guidance for health care workers.
The body of a 43-year-old avid skier who got caught up in a sweeping snow storm over Christmas has been found in an unlikely spot. Roy Angelotta disappeared around 10 p.m. Christmas Eve while skiing at the Northstar California Resort in the Sierra Nevada mountains and was thought to have gone off-piste due to low visibility and bad weather. Hi body was found Saturday about three miles from the resort in a residential area. Law enforcement officials say he was likely trying to find a safe haven from the storm when he collapsed. “It is possible Angelotta was attempting to find the neighborhood near Truckee when he succumbed to the elements,” the sheriff’s office said, according to NBC News. “There was no indication of any suspicious or unusual activity.” An autopsy is scheduled to determine his exact cause of death.
The Washington Post faced backlash Saturday for a Twitter message promoting a story about President Biden frequently attending funerals since taking office.
The story was headlined “Biden, funerals and a bygone era.”
The tweet and story appeared ahead of Biden’s attendance Saturday day at a funeral service in Nevada for former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who died Dec. 28 at age 82.
It was the seventh funeral Biden has attended since becoming president, the Post noted.
WASHINGTON POST CONTINUES POOR FACT-CHECKING RECORD AGAINST TOM COTTON, FORCED TO MAKE SECOND CORRECTION
President Biden, first lady Jill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris attend the funeral service for former Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, at the Washington National Cathedral, Friday, Dec. 10, 2021, in Washington. (Associated Press)
“Biden, who heads to Sen. Marry M. Reid’s memorial Saturday – his seventh as president – uses funerals to honor his friendships and make a point about bipartisanship,” the original Post tweet said.
“Not everyone thinks it’s the best use of his time,” the message added.
But after many readers defended Biden for attending funerals and objected to the tweet, the Post deleted the message.
“We’ve deleted a tweet that inaccurately represented the scope of the story,” the Post wrote.
The new tweet promoting the story simply used the headline from the story, “Biden, funerals and a bygone era,” without additional comment.
Twitter users took the newspaper to task.
“The Washington Post attacked Joe Biden for attending ‘too many’ funerals this year,” one write noted. “They say it’s ‘not the best use of his time.’ Wow! Do you know what’s not the best use of your time? Reading WaPo. Would you please do me a favor? Cancel your subscription to the Washington Post.”
“Afraid I don’t see the point of this piece,” another added. “There are plenty of valid reasons to criticize Biden’s presidency. Going to funerals of friends and colleagues isn’t one of them.”
The story itself said that attending funerals was “frequently caricatured as the purview of vice presidents,” but Biden as president has “made sure to go himself, and may have attended even more if not for the coronavirus pandemic.”
There are plenty of valid reasons to criticize Biden’s presidency. Going to funerals of friends and colleagues isn’t one of them.”
— Twitter user
The previous funerals Biden has attended as president have included those for former Secretary of State Colin Powell and for former U.S. Sens. Bob Dole and John Warner, the Post noted.
Other recent mishaps from The Washington Post have included Thursday’s correction of a fact-checking story about Republican U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas.
Then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and wife Jill Biden touch the flag-draped casket of the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., at the Capitol in Washington, July 27, 2020. (Associated Press)
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The newspaper’s fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, had awarded Cotton two “Pinnochios” in March for predicting that convicted Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev would receive coronavirus-relief funds from the federal government.
When that actually happened, Kessler was forced to “adjust” the Pinocchio rating, which he did Thursday.
In November, the Post issued corrections on more than a dozen previous articles related to coverage of the Steele dossier, which was central to the investigation of possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.
Fox News’ Brandon Gillespie and Brian Flood contributed to this story.
The woman who accused former Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield of multiple sexual assaults since she was a teenager was revealed to be his own sister-in-law.
Rebekah Chatfield, who is married to the politician’s younger brother, claims the former speaker assaulted her “more times than I can count” beginning when she was 15 years old more than a decade ago.
Rebekah, now 26, filed the criminal complaint with the Lansing Police Department against Lee, 33, she said in several interviews with Bridge Michigan.
The assaults allegedly began when she dated the politician’s younger brother and continued until 2021, she told the outlet.
“He destroyed me, and has controlled my life since I was 15-16, the past 10-11 years,” she said. “And I know the only way to get justice for this is to come forward and to file a criminal (complaint) against him.”
Lee, a Republican, was the youngest person to serve as Speaker of the House in Michigan in over 100 years. He left office in 2020 due to term limits.
Rebekah claimed the assaults began when she was 15 or 16 years old at Northern Michigan Christian Academy, a private school in Burt Lake where Lee taught and coached soccer before he launched his political career. His father is pastor of the church, the school superintendent and a teacher.
She had reportedly been dating Lee’s younger brother, Aaron Chatfield. Rebekah and Aaron were pushed to marry when at 19, after their families discovered they were having sex, according to the report.
Rebekah and Aaron Chatfield were engaged in June 2014 and married two months later.Facebook
Rebekah claimed she kept the incidents secret from her family and husband because she was ashamed and afraid to tell them. Her mental health reached a breaking point in December, when she finally shared her trauma with them and subsequently filed the police report, according to Bridge.
Rebekah would allegedly stay at Lee’s home often, and she said the touching began as unwanted gropes in the basement stairwell, eventually progressing to sexual intercourse, she told Bridge. She claimed the assaults continued “more times than I can count.
“I had a lot of family stuff going on in my life,” she told Bridge. “My dad was a recovering alcoholic, and so I believe that Lee used those (circumstances) against me and helped take advantage of me. So he would manipulate me, he would mess with my emotions.”
With trouble at home, she became more dependent on the Chatfield family, who “ran that whole church and school” that had become essential to her social life, she said.
“My whole world was the Chatfield family,” she said. “So if I told (the Chatfields), that would, that would ruin everything. I couldn’t see what would happen past then. I didn’t know there was an option to report. I didn’t know there were options for therapy.”
Aaron claimed to remember his older brother being handsy with his then-girlfriend when they were younger.
“I always had questions,” he told Bridge. “I don’t remember how I asked, I just remember saying, ‘Is something going on between you and Lee?’
“I just saw the way he looked at her.”
Lee Chatfield served as speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives from 2019 to 2021.AP
Rebekah said Lee would find reasons to text her late at night, and enter the guest room and grope her. She said the sexual assaults when she stayed at Lee’s home became more frequent, eventually culminating in sex. Each time she would break up with Aaron, she said Lee would coax them back together.
The psychological abuse wore her down, she said, and she stopped resisting.
“When I was in my darkest place, I didn’t know what else to do, and he continued to remind me that I didn’t have, really, anyone else but him,” she said.
Rebekah’s mother, Debbie Newberry, claimed to have seen a change in her daughter’s behavior in her later teenage years as Lee allegedly began to groom her daughter.
Rebekah and Aaron were engaged in June 2014 and married two months later, according to Bridge. Neither of the 19-year olds were prepared for marriage, and had second thoughts, the report said.
The night before the wedding, while Rebekah was crying inside of the Chatfield’s home, she alleged Lee offered to comfort her, before forcing her into a closet for a sex act.
“After he finished he said, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll talk to Aaron, you guys are getting married.’” Rebekah Chatfield told Bridge. “And he walked out.”
After Rebekah and Aaron were married, the affair allegedly continued while the two went off to separate colleges. She recalled one time where Lee allegedly visited with his wife and two children, “And during my husband’s soccer game,” she said, “he took me back to my house and assaulted me.”
Rebekah Chatfield claimed the assaults began when she was a teenager at a private school where Lee Chatfield taught and coached soccer.Getty Images
Aaron quit school earlier to support his brother’s political career. He claimed to Bridge that he’d worked in Lansing as Lee’s driver and would take the rising politician to strip clubs and to meet with various women, including a former staffer.
“Lee portrays himself as a family tradition, conservative guy who believes in the Bible and the Bible is so important,” said Aaron, 26. “No, it couldn’t be further from who my man was as a person.”
On one occasion two years ago, Rebekah said she and Aaron were visiting Lee’s office when he asked Aaron to go pick up a pizza. Lee pressured her into unwanted sex in a separate room before his brother returned, she alleged.
Since Aaron learned about his brother’s years of assault on his wife in December, he has been supportive of his wife and is confident she is telling the truth, he alleged.
“I’m rethinking every conversation I ever had with Lee,” Aaron reportedly said.
The pain, he said, “goes very deep,” calling his older brother “the person I looked up to most in the world.”
Lee’s father, Rusy Chatfield, who founded the church and school where his son taught told Bridge “the allegations are false.”
Paul Chatfield, another younger brother who also worked with Lee in politics, said he believes Lee engaged in “inappropriate behavior” with Rebekah but questions her timeline.
“What she is saying, I don’t believe,” Paul Chatfield said, adding that “the best-case scenario is, I’m disappointed” in his brother.
Rebekah acknowledged to the Bridge that at times it was she who initiated contact with Lee, but denied that it was consensual.
“…it was never consensual, because it started when I was a minor — the brainwashing, the mentality, the manipulation, the psychological, the emotional — he groomed me into being who he wanted me to be.”
Lee has not commented on the accusations, but his attorney Mary Chartier told The Bridge in a statement that both were “consenting adults” in the relationship.
“Their affair lasted for years, but they were both consenting adults,” she said. “Mr. Chatfield deeply regrets the decisions he has made. It has caused great pain to his wife and family, and they are working through this together. But he did not assault this woman in any manner during their years-long adult relationship. He intends to vigorously fight these false claims.”
Under Michigan law, the age of consent in 16, however it is illegal for teachers to have any type of penetrative sex with a student under the age of 18.
Multiple North Carolina skiers were injured after they were knocked off a chairlift that was doused by water erupting from a damaged hydrant, as others jumped to avoid the same fate.
The dramatic scene unfolded Friday evening, when a skier ran into the water and air hydrant during snowmaking operations at Beech Mountain Resort, according to WSOC.
Highly pressurized water spouted dozens of feet into the air directly into the path of chairlifts bringing skiers up the mountain, video showed.
A college student celebrating her birthday with her best friend was violently ejected from the chairlift as it passed over the geyser, the article said.
“I’m in quite a bit of pain, mainly on my left side of my body. I have bruises from head to toe, some big, some small, like all over my body,” Emma Lopinto, 19, told the station, adding her friend suffered a possible spinal injury.
Multiple North Carolina skiers were injured after they were knocked off a chairlift that was doused by water erupting from a damaged hydrant, as others jumped to avoid the same fate.WCNC-TV
“We just grabbed each other and ducked our head and all I remember is the metal bar flying up and then me flying up. I don’t remember anything and I remember opening my eyes belly first on the ground,” Lopinto said.
Two women reportedly decided to jump to the ground below to avoid getting jolted and soaked in the cold water bursting from the pipe.
“Everyone was in shock. You’re not going to jump from 25 feet, if you don’t think you have to,” Ivy-Elise Ivey, one of several people that jumped, told the station.
Two women decided to jump to the ground below to avoid getting doused in the cold water bursting from the damaged pipe.WCNC-TV
“I’m in some serious pain, even with the medicine. I can’t dress myself. I can’t shower. I can’t drive. I can’t lift anything, and that hand my fingers aren’t working right,” Ivey reportedly said of her broken arm.
Workers at the resort said they did not tell skiers to jump, but the injured woman said they were unable to turn off the water right away, according to the outlet.
“As soon as we became aware of the problem, we took action as quickly as possible to shut off the water and assist the remaining skiers in disembarking at the top of the lift,” Beech Mountain reportedly said of its “difficult situation.”
Cold highly pressurized water spouted dozens of feet into the air directly into the chairlifts bringing skiers up the mountain.WCNC-TV
Lopinto and one other patient were taken to the hospital by paramedics; Ivey took private transportation there, according to the article.
“I don’t want to put blame on anyone. I just want people to know it was a more serious event than I feel like is being said,” Lopinto told the station.
Los Angeles police were involved in a dangerous high-speed pursuit tonight of an attempted murder suspect on freeways and surface streets in the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood, but lost the suspect vehicle.
The pursuit began in the Encino area just after 6:30 p.m., according to the LAPD.
Police and two TV news helicopters lost track of the suspect when the car exited the Golden State (5) Freeway on Sierra Highway, near the border between Mission Hills and Santa Clarita, the LAPD reported. The search was called off at 7:09 p.m.
Speeds exceeded 140 miles per hour on the freeways, according to NBC4.
The suspect got on and off the 5 Freeway at times and onto surface streets in the Sylmar and Mission Hills areas
It was reported that police have possibly identified the suspect but information about that person was not released. There were no details immediately available about the attempted murder that prompted the chase.
It was unknown who the registered owner of the vehicle is. The car is a black Dodge Charger with Texas license plates.
