Tag: wildfires

Wildfire advisory for Filipino Community in the Big Island and Maui

Residents of Filipino descent residing in regions impacted by the Hurricane Dora-sparked wildfires are urged to prioritize safety. Stay vigilant, follow evacuation orders promptly, and stay informed through local updates. A recent declaration from the Office of the Governor, dated August 9, 2023, strongly advises against nonessential travel to Maui Island. For assistance, affected Filipino nationals can reach out to the Philippine Consulate General in Honolulu via the emergency hotline: (808) 253-9446.  

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Like a warzone: Hawaii’s fleeing tourists tell of escape

KAHULUI, United States, Aug 11, 2023 (AFP) – Tourists fleeing Hawaii’s deadly wildfire told Thursday how they had been trapped without food and power for days, but felt lucky to be escaping somewhere that “looks like a warzone.” Dozens of people perished when a fast-moving fire tore through the historic settlement of Lahaina, destroying hundreds of buildings on Maui island. Thousands of locals have been left homeless, and tourists have been urged to leave to […]

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VIDEO: Hawaii wildfires: ‘We are not getting the help we need,’ says Lahaina resident

“We’re trying to save people’s lives, and I feel like we are not getting the help we need,” says Kekoa Lansford, a resident of Lahaina on Hawaii’s west coast. “We still get dead bodies in the water floating and on the seawall,” Lansford adds. At least 36 people have died, and more than 270 buildings have been damaged or destroyed in the seriously affected town, according to officials. https://youtu.be/lFeXrceGbLc  

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Hawaii fire death toll hits 53, expected to rise higher

KAHULUI, United States, Aug 11, 2023 (AFP) – The death toll from a terrifying wildfire that razed a historic Hawaiian town hit 53 Thursday, making it one of the deadliest disasters to strike the islands since they became a US state. Brushfires on the west coast of Hawaii’s Maui island — fueled by high winds from a nearby hurricane — broke out Tuesday and rapidly engulfed the seaside town of Lahaina. The flames moved so […]

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Thousands of tourists flee wildfire on Greece’s Rhodes island

RHODES, Greece, July 24, 2023 (AFP) – Tens of thousands of people fled wildfires on the Greek island of Rhodes on Sunday as terrified tourists scrambled to get home. And there were reports of wildfires breaking out on Corfu, another popular Greek island, with land and sea evacuations underway late Sunday. On Rhodes, firefighters tackled blazes that erupted in peak tourism season, sparking the country’s largest-ever wildfire evacuation — and leaving flights and holidays cancelled. […]

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Smoke choking Canadians but cooling wildfires by blocking out sun

OTTAWA, May 22, 2023 (AFP) – Wildfire smoke blanketing western Canada has triggered health warnings in several cities, but was also helping to cool blazes by blocking out a hot sun across hard-hit portions of the country Sunday. The wildfires in Alberta province have displaced tens of thousands of people and scorched more than 941,000 hectares over several weeks. “It is a mixed bag certainly with smoke,” Christie Tucker of the Alberta Wildfire agency told […]

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New study quantifies link between climate crisis, wildfires

  By Issam AHMED Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON, May 16, 2023 (AFP) – In a first, US climate scientists have quantified the extent to which greenhouse gasses from the world’s top fossil fuel companies have contributed to wildfires. Their analysis, published Tuesday in Environmental Research Letters, found that carbon dioxide and methane emissions from the so-called “Big 88” firms were responsible for more than a third of the area scorched by forest blazes in western North […]

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Climate change a double blow for oil-rich Mideast: experts

by Frank ZELLER Agence France-Presse PAPHOS, Cyprus (AFP) – The climate crisis threatens a double blow for the Middle East, experts say, by destroying its oil income as the world shifts to renewables and by raising temperatures to unliveable extremes. Little has been done to address the challenge in a region long plagued by civil strife, war and refugee flows, even as global warming looks likely to accelerate these trends, a conference heard last week. […]

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Dry year leaves Syria wheat farmers facing crop failure

by Delil Souleiman with Maher al-Mounes in Damascus Agence France-Presse TAL SHAEER, Syria (AFP) – After Syrian farmer Abdelbaqi Souleiman lost his last wheat crop to a wildfire, he had hoped for a better harvest this summer. But this spring there was hardly any rain. “Last year the field I planted was burnt to the ground,” said the 48-year-old. “This year there wasn’t enough rain, and we didn’t harvest any wheat.” As man-made climate change […]

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California fights fire with fire to protect giant sequoias

by Paula RAMON Agence France-Presse LOS ANGELES, California (AFP) – The so-far successful battle this month in California to save the world’s biggest trees from ever-worsening forest blazes seems to offer an important lesson: You can fight fire with fire. Human-caused climate change has made the western United States hotter, drier and more vulnerable to increasingly destructive wildfires, which have this year taken a horrific toll on the region’s forests. That has included threatening huge […]

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Turkey to ratify Paris climate agreement, Erdogan tells UN

UNITED NATIONS, United States (AFP) – President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Tuesday that Turkey was ready to finally ratify the Paris Agreement on climate change. Erdogan’s announcement at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly followed a year of violent weather events in Turkey — including wildfires and flash floods — that have claimed some 100 lives. Turkey in April 2016 signed the landmark agreement on limiting the dangerous emissions that contribute to […]

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Climate: summer wildfires emit record amount of CO2

by Marlowe HOOD Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) – Wildfires in Siberia, North America and around the Mediterranean caused record levels of planet-warming CO2 emissions this summer, the EU’s Earth monitoring service said Tuesday. Globally, forests going up in flames emitted more than 2.5 billion tonnes of CO2 — equivalent to India’s annual emissions from all sources — in July and August alone, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) reported. More than half of CO2 […]

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