- IDF: Gaza resident says Hamas preventing evacuations; thousands return north The Times of Israel
- Why is Israel attacking south Gaza after telling people to go there? Reuters
- Fearing airstrikes and crowded shelters, Palestinians in north Gaza defy Israeli evacuation orders The Associated Press
- Israel/OPT: Israeli army threats ordering residents of northern Gaza to leave may amount to war crimes [EN/AR] – occupied Palestinian territory ReliefWeb
- Israelis, Palestinians Both Struggle to Find Shelter for Displaced | VOANews Voice of America
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: Evacuations
Indiana’s recycling plant fire is mostly out, but evacuations remain as crews monitor air quality and clear debris from schools and homes – CNN
- Indiana’s recycling plant fire is mostly out, but evacuations remain as crews monitor air quality and clear debris from schools and homes CNN
- Richmond Toxic Fire: City to offer free cleaning kits to residents, discuss lift of evacuation order WHIO
- EPA begins debris removal process in Indiana, Ohio WDTN.com
- Focus turns to getting displaced Richmond residents home as firefighters control blaze Palladium-Item
- Hundreds still waiting for OK to go home after Indiana recycling plant fire. Officials set to evaluate the evacuation order today CNN
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Mudslides trigger evacuations, close roads in Berkeley Hills
Mudslides in the Berkeley Hills triggered evacuations and closed roads on Monday morning, officials said.
A Nixle alert issued this morning advised residents in the area of Middlefield Road, Wildcat Canyon Road and The Spiral to be prepared to evacuate, the Berkeley Police Department told SFGATE. The alert also asked people to avoid the area.
Berkeley Councilmember Susan Wengraf told SFGATE the mudslide in the Park Hills neighborhood occurred at about 6 a.m. and seven homes were evacuated. One home was red-tagged on Middlefield Road, Wengraf said.
“It’s my understanding that there’s no need to evacuate any further,” she said on the phone at noon.
The Spiral — a short road off Wildcat Canyon Road — and Middlefield Road north of the Crossways, are both closed, Berkeley police said in an advisory.
Wildcat Canyon Road between Sunset and Park Hills roads is also closed due to a mudslide. Authorities responded to the area shortly after 7 a.m.
The ground is still moving and trees can be heard cracking from the slide, Berkeley Fire Battalion Chief Bill Kehoe said around 9 a.m.
A mudslide was also reported Monday morning in the area of Sports Lane and the Clark Kerr campus. UC Berkeley Police asked people to avoid the area.
Journalist Frances Dinkelspiel posted images on Twitter showing a mudslide on Alvarado Road in the Berkeley-Oakland area. “An Oakland police officer just said the Oakland Public Works looked at Alvarado Road slide and said it is so big that the city will have to hire a contractor to clean it up,” Dinkelspiel, the co-founder and former executive editor of Berkeleyside and Cityside wrote. “So the road will be closed for a bit.”
Bay City News contributed to this story. This breaking news story was updated.
Joshimath in Indian Himalayas sinks; cracks on homes force evacuations
His house was in the danger zone, authorities said, and his family was told to evacuate. Vein-like marks crisscross the white and blue walls of all eight rooms in his two-story home, which is littered with hurriedly packed clothes and moving boxes.
Joshimath is the latest casualty of the Himalayan region, where unchecked development is colliding with climate change and frequent natural disasters.
The town is a warning sign, experts say, not just for India but for the entire Himalayan Hindu Kush mountain region, part of what has been called the “Third Pole,” which contains the world’s third-largest repository of glacial ice. The Third Pole spans more than half a dozen countries, including China, and is critical to the fate of more than a billion people.
More than 700 homes in Joshimath, a town of about 22,000 people, have developed cracks. Construction in the area, some 320 miles northeast of India’s capital, New Delhi, was halted this week. The chief minister of Uttarakhand state, where Joshimath is located, announced that cities would be audited to ensure they consider both ecological and economic needs.
In 2021, the area experienced a deadly flood after a section of rock and hanging glacier fell down a steep slope. That calamity was exacerbated as the floods encountered infrastructure barriers, picking up speed and debris and killing more than 80 people. Experts said climate change may have contributed to the disaster, and studies have found that glaciers in the Himalayas are melting dramatically, and at a much faster pace than during the 20th century.
There are many reasons that earth sinks, though it is typically the result of human activity. Land subsidence can occur when groundwater, which holds up land, is removed from certain rocks. When the water is gone, the rock “falls in on itself,” writes the U.S. Geological Survey, which also notes that activities such as underground mining can contribute to the sinking.
“We are messing up our environment to an extent that is irreversible,” said Anjal Prakash, who researches climate change and sustainability at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad.
Local officials declined to pinpoint a specific cause for land subsidence in Joshimath, which sits in an earthquake-prone area, saying scientists are investigating. But Prakash noted that hydropower and other large infrastructure projects are being built within the fragile ecosystem of the Himalayas without taking ecology into account. (Uttarakhand’s glacier-fed rivers make it an attractive area for hydropower projects, eight of which were under construction in 2020.)
Climate change acts as a force multiplier and “will make everything worse,” said Prakash, who has contributed to reports by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“Nobody is really sure” about what is happening, said Piyoosh Rautela, executive director of the Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority. The immediate trigger for the recent large cracks, he said, seemed to be a breach in an underground water reservoir that forced muddy water to spurt out of the ground.
“As the water leaches off finer materials from the debris, the land sinks,” he said, adding that construction has exceeded the land’s capacity.
As the experts investigate, residents such as tourism worker Durga Saklani, 52, are living amid apocalyptic scenes. Tiles in his recently constructed home have begun to pop out, doors won’t shut, and walls are sinking, he said.
“The sounds of the cracking still ring in my ears every night,” he said.
Many residents pin blame on a hydropower project in the town’s vicinity that the national government is behind. They allege that blasting and drilling for a tunnel punctured an underground stream and made the land unstable.
NTPC, the government-owned power company behind the project, did not respond to a request for comment. But the Indian Express newspaper reported that it denied the charges and said that its tunnel does not pass under Joshimath. No blasting is ongoing, the company said.
Prakash Negi, a 45-year-old resident, said the power project was opposed by locals. When people first reported damage to their homes last year, the government did nothing, he said.
His house has minor cracks, but he fears what comes next.
“We have lived here for generations,” Negi said. “If this continues to happen, where will we go?”
Situated at an altitude of 6,151 feet, Joshimath sits on the debris of an old landslide. The town expanded rapidly after emerging as a key rest spot for the thousands of devotees traveling farther up the mountain range to important Hindu and Sikh pilgrimage spots.
Cracks and signs of sinking also appeared in Joshimath in the 1970s, but the scale of the damage is far greater this time, experts familiar with the topography said.
The current crisis is the result of a “governance failure,” said geologist Yaspal Sundriyal, a professor at Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University in Uttarakhand.
He suggested that authorities demolish multistoried buildings and damaged houses, which would reduce pressure on the land. People should not be allowed to construct new homes in unstable areas, and hydropower projects should not be built in the higher Himalayan region, he added.
“We need to have the stringent rules and regulations and timely implementation of these rules,” he said. “We are not against development but not at the cost of disasters.”
Residents who have been rendered homeless overnight say their future is bleak. Kaparuwan, the businessman, had left Joshimath and worked in larger cities. But he said he came back to support the local economy. He runs a small hotel and had set up a laundry business in November with a $25,000 bank loan.
“Now the [laundromat’s] land has a two-feet gaping hole,” he said. “I can’t see my future anymore.”
California weather live: Flash flood warning in San Francisco after Montecito and Santa Barbara storm evacuations
Drone video of flooded Felton in Santa Cruz County
At least 17 people have been killed and a five-year-old boy remains missing as a series of extreme storms continue to batter California.
More lives have now been lost in the storms – which began hammering the state last week – than were caused by two years of wildfires.
Some 22 million people across California and parts of Oregon remain under a flood advisory as the atmospheric river looks set to keep dumping heavy precipitation across the region.
The extreme weather saw the celebrity enclave of Montecito placed under an evacuation order and on Tuesday the whole of San Francisco was warned of flash flooding.
The search resumed on Tuesday for five-year-old Kyle Doan who was swept away when his mother’s truck got stuck in a creek near Paso Robles in central California. Low visibility and raging waters had forced emergency responders to postpone their efforts.
More severe weather is forecast throughout the week bringing the threat of more flash flooding, rising rivers, and mudslides on already saturated soils.
Palm Springs residents rescued as California’s desert city is hit by flash floods
The Palm Springs Fire Department carried out the swift water rescue after flooding in a desert wash in the city. A wash is an area in the desert where water once flowed or that floods during heavy rain or flash flooding.
Graeme Massie11 January 2023 19:41
Mammoth Mountain continues to dig out from storm
The famed California ski resort in the Sierra Nevada says it got up to 7.5ft of snow in the recent storms, with more expected later this week.
“WHAT.A.STORM. We thought this photo was fitting for the final Dump Alert of this Mammoth mega-storm which dropped 6 to 7.5 FEET of snow in the last few days,” the resort’s Instagram account stated.
Graeme Massie11 January 2023 19:19
Watch: Trapped driver rescued from floodwater in California desert city of Palm Springs
Trapped motorist rescued from floodwater in California desert city of Palm Springs
Louise Boyle11 January 2023 18:56
Southern California surveys its damage as north braces for more downpours
Southern California was taking stock of the damage from heavy rainfall and high winds on Wednesday even as a new atmospheric river made its way onshore.
Today’s downpours were expected to only impact northern areas of the state, giving the south a break – at least until the weekend, the National Weather Service reported.
Abandoned cars are left in a flooded street in Santa Barbara earlier this week
(REUTERS)
Louise Boyle11 January 2023 18:27
Fatigue setting in at the National Weather Service
Louise Boyle11 January 2023 18:14
Spike in lightning strikes
The parade of atmospheric rivers has caused an abnormal number of lightning strikes in California in recent weeks.
The state typically has one of the lowest annual tallies of lightning strikes in the nation.
National Weather Service meteorologist Robert Baruffaldi told The New York Times that this was because of the lack of humidity in California that means “it’s harder to get the persistent strikes that other parts of the nation see”.
On Tuesday, the storm system parked over the San Francisco Bay area led to five to ten lightning strikes every five minutes, the local CBS channel reported.
Lightning strikes are seen above buildings in San Fransisco, California on 5th January
(Lapine via REUTERS)
Louise Boyle11 January 2023 17:59
Snow for days
Mammoth Mountain ski area was closed on Tuesday because it received too much snowfall, according to reports.
“An incredible 420cm [165 inches] has fallen since Christmas with over 4ft or 120cm in just in the last day alone,” Global News Canada’s Chief Meteorologist Anthony Farnell tweeted. He shared an image of a ski-lift at the resort under a heavy white blanket of fresh powder.
The resort’s official site reported that the mountain will have a staggered reopening on Wednesday. “Expect delays in all lift openings due to extensive avalanche mitigation work,” an alert stated.
Louise Boyle11 January 2023 17:36
Newsom links ‘weather whiplash’ to climate crisis
Governor Gavin Newsom hinted at a link between California’s extreme weather and the climate crisis during a visit to Santa Cruz county on Tuesday.
The area has been one of the most heavily impacted from the atmospheric river deluging the state.
“The dries are getting a lot drier the last three years, and the wets are getting a lot wetter. This weather whiplash — is that the new reality?” he said, according to NBC News.
California has been in a state of “megadrought” for the past two decades, intensified by the impacts of global heating. The climate crisis is responsible for about 42 per cent of the soil moisture deficit since 2000, according to a UCLA research paper last year. It also noted that it could take several years of high precipitation to overcome the mega-drought.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom listens during a news conference about storm damage on Jan. 10 in Capitola
(AP)
Louise Boyle11 January 2023 17:12
Tens of thousands remain without power
Tens of thousands of customers remain without power across California as severe storms continued to batter the state.
Some 57,835 homes and businesses were in blackout on Wednesday morning, according to utility tracker poweroutage.us
The most outages are located in Mendocino county, north of San Francisco, along with Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties which includes the city of San Jose and Silicon Valley.
Power outages across California on Wednesday, January 11
(poweroutage.us)
Louise Boyle11 January 2023 16:47
California transport officials warns people against taking to the roads
California transport officials were warning people against taking to the roads with more severe weather on the way.
Districts were “strongly advising” the public to avoid travel this week if possible, reported the California Department of Transportation, known as “Caltrans”.
“These storm systems have affected the majority of CA in some shape or form,” the department tweeted, and advised drivers to consult state travel alerts before heading out.
Louise Boyle11 January 2023 16:32
California weather live: Flash flood warning in San Francisco after Montecito and Santa Barbara storm evacuations
Drone video of flooded Felton in Santa Cruz County
At least 14 people have been killed and a five-year-old boy remains missing as a series of extreme storms continue to batter California.
More lives have now been lost in the storms – which began hammering the state last week – than were caused by two years of wildfires.
In the last two days, more than a foot of rain has fallen in parts of the state bringing dangerous flash floods and leaving more than 200,000 homes without power as of Tuesday morning.
Some 22 million people across California and parts of Oregon are under flood advisory, as the atmospheric river looks set to keep dumping heavy precipitation across the region.
The extreme weather saw the star-studded city of Montecito placed under an evacuation order and on Tuesday the whole of San Francisco was warned of flash flooding.
As conditions eased slightly, the search resumed on Tuesday for a boy, 5, who was swept away when his mother’s truck got stuck in a creek near Paso Robles.
More severe weather is forecast throughout the week, raising the potential for flooding, rising rivers, and mudslides on already saturated soils.
Where are California’s extreme storms headed?
The next severe front will impact northern California and the Pacific Northwest from Wednesday.
It comes after days of heavy rain which left land waterlogged, adding to the risk of mudslides, particularly in the burn scars of wildfires where land is already destabilized. The heavy rain has also led to rapid water rises in rivers and streams across California and portions of far western Nevada.
Oliver O’Connell11 January 2023 10:15
What is an atmospheric river?
The system swamping California is known as an “atmospheric river” – or a “river in the sky” – a band of water vapor that forms over the ocean and can be hundreds of miles wide.
Louise Boyle explains how the phenomenon operates and what it means for California.
Stuti Mishra11 January 2023 09:15
Storm ‘more intense’ and stayed ‘much longer’, says fire department as more evacuations are ordered
More evacuations have been ordered in counties as the storm warning remains in Northern California after torrential downpours.
The Stanislaus County officials have ordered immediate evacuations for some residents in the Newman area of the San Joaquin River and east River Road amid warnings of further rains and high winds.
The California fire department has said the storm on Tuesday was different because ‘it stayed much longer’.
“This storm was different from the standpoint that it was here much longer. It was more intense because of the prior storm, the ground was much more saturated, which led to a lot more flooding and a lot more rescues because of the ground saturation,” said Barry Parker, division chief of the Ventura County Fire Department.
The latest Pacific storm unleashed torrential downpours and damaging winds in California, knocking out power and turning city streets into rivers as mudslides cut off highways and entire communities faced evacuation orders.
More than 33 million Californians were threatened by severe weather throughout the day as “heavy to excessive” rainfall was expected across the state.
The storms have killed at least 17 people since the start of the year, California Governor Gavin Newsom said.
Stuti Mishra11 January 2023 08:15
Senior found dead in boat in Morro Bay
Officials encountered the man’s remains in a stored boat on Tuesday morning, and haven’t determine the cause of death.
Morro Bay was pounded by the atmospheric river that has brought storms across California, killing a woman in nearby Avila Beach on Monday when her car was overtaken by flood waters.
Josh Marcus11 January 2023 07:15
The worst climate disasters of 2022
Wildfires tearing through the London suburbs. One-third of Pakistan underwater. Drought-linked famine looming for tens of millions of people in East Africa. Billions of dollars in damage from a “500-year” hurricane that smacked into Florida.
The year 2022 brought disaster after disaster across the planet with scientists increasingly able to point to the climate crisis as the root cause.
Here, The Independent looks back at some of the most erratic and devastating events being driven by humanity’s continued reliance on burning fossil fuels:
Oliver O’Connell11 January 2023 06:15
Damage centred on Santa Barbara
With the soil already saturated, much of the damage has been concentrated around the city of Santa Barbara, about 100 miles (160 km) northwest of Los Angeles, where the steep foothills slope toward the Pacific Ocean.
Several remote spots have reported more than a foot (30 cm) of rain including the San Marcos Pass in the Santa Ynez Mountains above Santa Barbara, where more than 17 inches (43 cm) have fallen, according to the NWS.
In the Rancho Oso area of the Santa Ynez Mountains, mud and debris across the roadway isolated about 400 people and 70 horses, the Santa Barbara County Fire Department said on Twitter, posting a photo of a vehicle stuck in the mud. Rescue teams were on the way, spokesperson Scott Safechuck said.
Near the coast, the California Highway Patrol closed U.S. 101, the main highway connecting northern and southern California, with no estimated time on reopening.
Josh Marcus11 January 2023 05:15
On Monday, officials ordered the evacuation of some 25,000 people, including the entire affluent enclave of Montecito near Santa Barbara, due to heightened flood and mudslide risks. The 4,000 people of Planada, a community in Central California, started their Tuesday morning with an order to evacuate their homes by the county sheriff’s office.
The Montecito evacuation zone was among 17 California regions where authorities worry the ongoing torrential downpours could unleash lethal cascades of mud, boulders and other debris in the hillsides.
To the southeast in Ventura County, crews worked overnight to rescue drivers stuck in a three feet of mud flow along State Highway 126, the California Highway Patrol said.
Oliver O’Connell11 January 2023 04:15
San Francisco man goes viral for spraying unhoused person with house during storm
San Francisco may be facing strong rains, but that didn’t stop one business owner in the city’s Financial District from spraying an unhoused perrson with a hose on Monday.
In a clip that later went viral locally, the man can be seen saying, “Move,” as he blasts the individual, who sits on the sidewalk wrapped in blankets.
As the San Francisco Standard reports, the city is short thousands of shelter beds needed to house those on its streets as strong rains pelt the Bay Area.
Josh Marcus11 January 2023 03:00
Will epic California storms be enough to end state’s drought?
The intense weather has often proved catastrophic on the ground, causing flooding, downed trees, and mudslides that have killed at least 16 people and left roughly 224,000 people in the state without power, the Washington Post reports.
Despite all the destruction it has caused, will the atmospheric river end California’s historic drought, the worst in state history? Not quite, according to scientists.
Read our full report to understand why.
Josh Marcus11 January 2023 02:00
Watch: CHP capture huge landslide in Fresno Counthy
Oliver O’Connell11 January 2023 01:45
California flooding: All of Montecito under evacuation order
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rescuers ended the search for a 5-year-old boy who was swept away by floodwaters in central California while the entire coastal community of Montecito was ordered to evacuate Monday as the latest in a series of powerful storms walloped the state.
Tens of thousands of people remained without power, and some schools closed for the day. Streets and highways transformed into gushing rivers, trees toppled, mud slid and motorists growled as they hit roadblocks caused by fallen debris. The death toll from the relentless string of storms climbed from 12 to 14 on Monday, after two people were killed by falling trees, state officials said.
A roughly seven-hour search for the boy turned up only his shoe before officials called it off as water levels were too dangerous for divers, officials said. The boy has not been declared dead, said spokesperson Tony Cipolla of the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office.
The boy’s mother was driving a truck when it became stranded in floodwaters just before 8 a.m. near Paso Robles, a small city inland from California’s central coast, according to Tom Swanson, assistant chief of the Cal Fire/San Luis Obispo County Fire Department.
Bystanders were able to pull the mother out of the truck, but the boy was swept out of the vehicle and downstream, likely into a river, Swanson said. There was no evacuation order in the area at the time.
About 130 miles (209 kilometers) to the south, the entire community of Montecito and surrounding canyons scarred by recent wildfires were under an evacuation order that came on the fifth anniversary of a mudslide that killed 23 people and destroyed more than 100 homes in the coastal enclave.
The National Weather Service reported rainfall rates of one inch (2.5 centimeters) per hour, with heavy downpours expected throughout the night in the upscale area where roads wind along wooded hillsides studded with large houses. Montecito is squeezed between mountains and the Pacific and is home to celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, Rob Lowe and Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Jamie McLeod’s property was under the Montecito evacuation order, but she said there is no way for her to “get off the mountain” with an overflowing creek on one side and a mudslide on the other. The 60-year-old owner of the Santa Barbara Bird Sanctuary said one of her employees came to make a weekly food delivery and is stuck, too.
McLeod said she feels fortunate because her home sits on high ground and the power is still on. But she said she tires of the frequent evacuation orders since the massive wildfire followed by the deadly landslide five years ago.
“It is not easy to relocate,” said McLeod. “I totally love it — except in catastrophe.”
Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said the decision to evacuate nearly 10,000 people was “based on the continuing high rate of rainfall with no indication that that is going to change before nightfall.” Creeks were overflowing, and many roads were flooded.
Northbound lanes of U.S. 101, a key coastal route, were expected to be shut until Tuesday. Many other highways and local roads were closed because of rockslides and flooding.
Up the coast, evacuation orders were issued in Santa Cruz County for about 32,000 residents living near rain-swollen rivers and creeks. The San Lorenzo River was declared at flood stage, and drone footage showed numerous homes sitting in muddy brown water, the top halves of autos peeking out.
Maria Cucchiara, who lives in tiny, flooded Felton, went for a walk to count her blessings after “a huge branch harpooned” the roof of her small studio, she said.
“I have two kitties and we could’ve been killed. It was over a ton,” she said. “So needless to say, it was very disturbing.”
Nicole Martin, owner of the Fern River Resort in Felton, described a more laid-back scene Monday. Her clients sipped coffee amid towering redwood trees and were “enjoying the show,” she said, as picnic tables and other debris floated down the swollen San Lorenzo.
The river is usually about 60 feet (18 meters) below the cabins, Martin said, but it crept up to 12 feet (4 meters) from the cabins.
In Northern California, several districts closed schools and more than 35,000 customers remained without power in Sacramento — down from more than 350,000 a day earlier after gusts of 60 mph (97 kph) knocked majestic trees into power lines, according to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. A homeless person killed by a falling tree in the region was among the new deaths announced Monday.
The National Weather Service warned of a “relentless parade of atmospheric rivers” — long plumes of moisture stretching out into the Pacific that can drop staggering amounts of rain and snow. The precipitation expected over the next couple of days comes after storms last week knocked out power, flooded streets, and battered the coastline.
President Joe Biden issued an emergency declaration Monday to support storm response and relief efforts in more than a dozen counties.
The weather service issued a flood watch for a large portion of Northern and Central California, with 6 to 12 inches (15 to 30 centimeters) of rain expected through Wednesday in the already saturated Sacramento-area foothills.
In the Los Angeles area, there was potential for as much as 8 inches (20 centimeters) of rain in foothill areas late Monday and Tuesday. High surf was also expected.
Much of California remains in severe to extreme drought, though the storms have helped fill depleted reservoirs.
___
Associated Press writers Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles, Janie Har and Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco, Amy Taxin in Orange County, Nic Coury in Aptos, Martha Mendoza in Santa Cruz and Haven Daley in Felton contributed to this report.
Evacuations in Boulder County as Sunshine Wildland Fire grows to 16 acres – Boulder Daily Camera
A wildfire that started as a structure fire in Sunshine Canyon before being spread by strong winds has forced evacuations in the Boulder County foothills that will remain in place overnight.
The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office posted on Twitter at 1:54 p.m. Monday that they were responding to a structure fire in the 2900 block of Sunshine Canyon Drive. That fire then spread to grassland and was quickly fueled by winds out of the west at 20 to 25 mph.
The evacuation area includes Pine Brook Hill after an update to the area at 7:20 p.m. Monday. The map of the evacuation area can be found at bouldercounty.maps.arcgis.com.
Initial evacuation orders earlier Monday included the area west of Foothills Community Park. Boulder County spokeswoman Jennifer Churchill said it is estimated there were 937 residents under mandatory evacuation at one point, and the area included 389 structures, 346 of which were homes.
County officials did not anticipate lifting any further evacuation orders Monday night.
UPDATE: #SunshineWildlandFire now at 20% containment. They do hope winds will die down overnight, but don’t expect #Boulder County mandatory evacuation orders to be lifted tonight. Evacuation area has been updated, however: https://t.co/yglMoqxtxP pic.twitter.com/lwrNmN1yFW
— Mitchell Byars (@mitchellbyars) December 20, 2022
By 5 p.m., the fire had grown to 16 acres and was being referred to as the Sunshine Wildland Fire. Initial estimates at 3 p.m. had the fire at about 18 acres, but updated mapping reduced that number.
By 7:20 p.m., crews had reached 25% containment on the fire and hoped that calmer winds overnight would help firefighting efforts.
Churchill said she did not have any information on if any structures other than the one in the initial call were damaged.
A separate set of crews were dealing with the original structure fire, but according to scanner traffic that fire had been contained to only one home and was under control.
Boulder open space rangers during the day were attempting to locate hikers in the area, and anyone recreating in the Mount Sanitas area was asked to evacuate the area. Anne U. White trail and Bald Mountain open space are also closed.
An evacuation area has been opened at the East Boulder Community Center, 5660 Sioux Drive, and will be open as a shelter overnight.
Evacuees can take large animals to the Boulder County Fairgrounds at 9595 Nelson Road in Longmont and smaller animals to the Humane Society of Boulder Valley at 2323 55th St. in Boulder.
There are no mandatory evacuation orders in the city of Boulder. Areas west of Ninth Street between Linden and University avenues were under an evacuation warning, but those residents were given the all clear just before 5 p.m.
Boulder Fire-Rescue tweeted that “limited fire spread and improving weather conditions” led to the decision to lift the evacuation warning, but asked residents to continue to monitor the situation.
Westbound traffic is closed at both Sunshine Canyon and Linden drives west of Boulder.
Russian-installed authorities order evacuation of Kherson
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian-installed authorities in Ukraine told all residents of the city of Kherson to leave “immediately” Saturday ahead of an expected advance by Ukrainian troops waging a counteroffensive to recapture one of the first urban areas Russia took after invading the country.
In a post on the Telegram messaging service, the pro-Kremlin regional administration called on civilians to use boat crossings over a major river to move deeper into Russian-held territory, citing a tense situation on the front and the threat of shelling and alleged “terror attacks” by Kyiv.
Kherson has been in Russian hands since the early days of the nearly 8-month-long war in Ukraine. The city is the capital of a region of the same name, one of four that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed last month and put under Russian martial law on Thursday.
On Friday, Ukrainian forces bombarded Russian positions across the province, targeting pro-Kremlin forces’ resupply routes across the Dnieper River and inching closer to making a full assault on Kherson city. Ukraine has retaken some villages in the region’s north since launching its counteroffensive in late August.
Russian-installed officials were reported as trying desperately to turn Kherson city — a prime objective for both sides because of its key industries and ports — into a fortress while attempting to relocate tens of thousands of residents.
The Kremlin poured as many as 2,000 draftees into the surrounding region to replenish losses and strengthen front-line units, according to the Ukrainian army’s general staff.
The Dnieper River figures prominently in the regional battle because it serves multiple critical functions. It provides crossings for supplies, troops and civilians; drinking water for southern Ukraine and the annexed Crimean Peninsula; and power generation from a hydroelectric station.
Much of the area, including the power station and a canal feeding water to Crimea, is under Russian control.
Kherson’s Kremlin-backed authorities previously announced plans to evacuate all Russia-appointed officials and as many as 60,000 civilians across the river, in what local leader Volodymyr Saldo said would be an “organized, gradual displacement.”
Another Russia-installed official estimated Saturday that around 25,000 people from across the region had made their way over the Dnieper. In a Telegram post, Kirill Stremousov claimed that civilians were relocating willingly.
“People are actively moving because today the priority is life. We do not drag anyone anywhere,” he said.
Ukrainian and Western officials have expressed concern about potential forced transfers of residents to Russia or Russian-occupied territory.
Ukrainian officials have urged Kherson residents to resist attempts to relocate them, with one local official alleging that Moscow wanted to take civilians hostage and use them as human shields.
Elsewhere in the invaded country, hundreds of thousands of people in central and western Ukraine woke up on Saturday to power outages and periodic bursts of gunfire. In its latest war tactic, Russia has intensified strikes on power stations, water supply systems and other key infrastructure across the country.
Ukraine’s air force said in a statement Saturday that Russia had launched “a massive missile attack” targeting “critical infrastructure,” adding that it had downed 18 out of 33 cruise missiles launched from the air and sea.
In a Telegram post published later Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy referenced 36 missiles, “most of which were shot down.” The reason for the discrepancy in numbers was not immediately clear.
Air raid sirens blared across Ukraine twice by early afternoon, sending residents scurrying into shelters as Ukrainian air defense tried to shoot down explosive drones and incoming missiles.
“Several rockets” targeting Ukraine’s capital were shot down Saturday morning, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging service.
The president’s office said in its morning update that five suicide drones were downed in the central Cherkasy region southeast of Kyiv.
The governors of six western and central provinces, as well as of the southern Odesa region on the Black Sea, gave similar reports.
Ukraine’s top diplomat said the day’s attacks proved Ukraine needed new Western-reinforced air defense systems “without a minute of delay.”
“Air defense saves lives,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said on Telegram that almost 1.4 million households lost power as a result of the strikes. He said some 672,000 homes in the western Khmelnytskyi region were affected and another 242,000 suffered outages in the Cherkasy region.
Most of the western city of Khmelnytskyi, which straddles the Bug River and had a pre-war population of 275,000, was left with no electricity, shortly after local media reported several loud explosions.
In a social media post on Saturday, the city council urged local residents to store water “in case it’s also gone within an hour.”
The mayor of Lutsk, a city of 215,000 in far western Ukraine, made a similar appeal on Saturday. Power in Lutsk was partially knocked out after Russian missiles slammed into local energy facilities, Mayor Ihor Polishchuk said.
He later added that a civilian suffered burns when a shockwave from the strike hit his house, and that one power station had been damaged beyond repair.
The central city of Uman, a key pilgrimage center for Hasidic Jews with about 100,000 residents before the war, also was plunged into darkness after a rocket hit a nearby power station, regional authorities said on Telegram.
Ukraine’s state energy company, Ukrenergo, responded to the strikes by announcing that rolling blackouts would be imposed in Kyiv and 10 Ukrainian regions to stabilize the situation.
In a Facebook post on Saturday, the company accused Russia of attacking “energy facilities within the principal networks of the western regions of Ukraine.” It claimed the scale of destruction was comparable to the fallout earlier this month from Moscow’s first coordinated attack on the Ukrainian energy grid.
Both Ukrenergo and officials in Kyiv have urged Ukrainians to conserve energy. Earlier this week, Zelenskyy called on consumers to curb their power use between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. and to avoid using energy-guzzling appliances such as electric heaters.
Zelenskyy said earlier in the week that 30% of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed since Russia launched the first wave of targeted infrastructure strikes on Oct. 10.
In a separate development, Russian officials said a shelling attack on a frontier town just kilometers north of the Ukrainian border killed two people and wounded 12.
Andrey Ikonnikov, the health minister for the southern Belgorod region of Russia, said a 14-year-old boy and an older man died on the spot after shells hit civilian infrastructure in Shebekino, which is home to around 44,500 people.
Earlier social media posts by the regional governor, Vladislav Gladkov, blamed the attack on Ukraine. Russia has previously accused Ukrainian forces of numerous strikes on civilians in the border regions of Belgorod and Kursk. Kyiv has not formally responded to these accusations.
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Kozlowska reported from London.
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Ukraine war: Ukrainian army approaches Kherson, Russian ‘evacuations’, dam warnings
1. Ukrainian forces approach Kherson
Russian and Ukrainian troops are preparing for a major battle over the strategic southern city of Kherson, the centre of one of four regions Russian President Vladimir Putin has illegally annexed and subjected to martial law.
Fighting and evacuations were reported in the Kherson region on Thursday as Moscow tried to pound Ukraine into submission with more missile and drone attacks on critical infrastructure.
Putin declared martial law on the annexed regions of Kherson, Luhansk, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia on Wednesday, in an attempt to assert Russian authority, amid battlefield setbacks, a troubled troop mobilisation, increasing criticism at home and abroad, and international sanctions.
The unsettled status of the annexed territories was visible in the Kherson region’s capital, where Russian military officials have replaced Kremlin-installed civilian leaders as part of martial law measures.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office said on Thursday that Ukrainian forces mounted 15 attacks on Russian military strongholds in the Kherson region.
As many as 2,000 Russian draftees have entered the Kherson region “to replenish losses and strengthen units on the front line,” according to Ukraine’s Army General Staff.
Russia’s Defence Ministry spokesman said Kremlin forces repelled Ukrainian attempts to advance with tanks on the Kherson villages of Sukhanove, Nova Kamianka and Chervonyi Yar.
Russia’s new military commander in Ukraine this week acknowledged the threat posed by Ukraine’s counteroffensive to Kherson.
General Sergei Surovikin claimed that Ukrainian forces were using HIMARS rockets to strike the city, adding that “as a whole the situation in the [war] zone can be described as tense.”
UK Defence Ministry said on Thursday that Russian authorities are considering “a major withdrawal of their forces” from all areas west of the Dnipro river.
2. Russia resumes ‘evacuations’ from Kherson
Russian-installed officials have urged residents in Kherson to “evacuate”, both for their safety and to allow the military to fortify.
Kremlin-backed governor Vladimir Saldo said authorities were moving civilians to “keep people safe” and allow the military to “act resolutely”.
Others have claimed these “evacuations” of Ukrainian civilians to Russian-controlled territories are forced or that people have no alternative route to safety.
Officials said some 15,000 residents had been relocated from the city and surrounding areas as of Thursday.
Kherson city, with a pre-war population of around 284,000, was one of the first urban areas Russia captured when it invaded Ukraine, and it remains the largest city it holds.
It is a prime target for both sides because of its key industries and major river port.
Reports of sabotage and assassinations of Moscow-backed officials in Kherson have surfaced for months in what appeared to be one of the most active Ukrainian resistance movements in occupied territory.
Moscow’s plans are to move approximately 10,000 people over the course of six days.
3. EU agrees to increase its financial support to Ukraine
European Union leaders approved a plan to provide Ukraine with €18 billion in financial support over the next year.
This comes after Zelenskyy’s warnings that Russia is trying to spark a refugee exodus by destroying Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
As a result of the plan, the 27-nation bloc would now match US financial support for the war-torn Eastern European country.
“Ukraine is telling us that they need approximately €3-4 billion per month to have enough resources for the basics,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
That figure would be met in equal part by the EU and the US, with additional money coming from international financial institutions, she said.
“It is very important to Ukraine to have a predictable and stable flow of income,” von der Leyen told reporters.
She said the EU is looking to provide about €1.5 billion each month, describing it as a funding amount that would be “stable and reliable.”
The bloc’s finance ministers have been tasked with coming up with a system for pulling together the money, which would come on top of the €9 billion in macro-financing support that the EU is already sending.
4. Zelenskyy urges West to pressure Russia into not destroying dam
Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged the West to warn Russia not to blow up a huge dam that would flood a large part of southern Ukraine, as his forces prepare to push Moscow’s troops from Kherson in one of the war’s most important battles.
In a television address, the Ukrainian president said Russian forces had planted explosives inside the huge Nova Kakhovka dam, which holds back an enormous reservoir, dominating much of southern Ukraine.
A Russian-installed official in the region, Vladimir Leontyev, said on Thursday that Ukrainian forces had launched five missile strikes against the dam and hydroelectric power station about 70 kilometres from Kherson city.
He said on Russian TV that if the facilities were destroyed, a critical canal providing water to annexed Crimea would be cut off.
Zelenskyy has claimed Russia mined the dam and power station, with plans to blow them up in what he called a terrorist act.
The Ukrainian president warned this could unleash 18 million cubic metres of water, flooding Kherson and dozens of areas where hundreds of thousands of people live. He told the European Council Russia would then try to blame Ukraine.
5. Putin fires rifle as he inspects mobilisation training ground
Putin on Thursday inspected a training ground for mobilised troops and was shown firing a sniper rifle in footage that supposedly intended to show his personal support for Russian soldiers heading to Ukraine.
The Russian president visited the centre, located southeast of Moscow, along with defence minister Sergei Shoigu.
Footage from the event shows a figure who appeared to be Putin lying flat on the ground and firing a rifle.
In the next frame, he could be seen dusting down his overcoat, slapping a soldier on the shoulder and wishing him good luck.
The visit came a day after Putin declared martial law in the four Ukrainian regions annexed by Russia.
Conscription efforts thus far have been described as chaotic, with a wide range of mistakes and call-up papers being sent to the wrong individuals.