Camp Fire Survivors Are Now Refugees In Their Own Country
In makeshift refugee camps, survivors of Northern California’s Camp fire face homelessness, norovirus and loss.
By Jenavieve Hatch
Last Thursday morning, Corey Gonzales woke to a pounding at his door.
When he opened the door, his neighbor was there, insisting he evacuate. Behind him, the sky was unfamiliar — black, yellow and orange. End-of-days stuff.
“We might be back, it won’t be that big a deal,” Gonzales, 28, told his fiancee as they packed a bag of clothes.
He thought he was only evacuating temporarily. Like so many residents of Paradise, California, who have been displaced by the ongoing Camp fire, he hoped that perhaps his family’s home could be saved. But as the hours passed, and refugees poured out of Paradise in cars and buses and on foot, it became clear that the wind-driven fire was moving faster and faster.
That night, Gonzales gathered his family. “We should start to be OK with the fact that maybe our stuff is gone,” he told them.
Florida sues drugstores Walgreens and CVS for alleged role in opioid crisis
Associated Press in Fort Lauderdale
Florida is suing the nation’s two largest drugstore chains, Walgreens and CVS, alleging they added to the state and national opioid crisis by overselling painkillers and not taking precautions to stop illegal sales.
The state attorney general, Pam Bondi, announced late on Friday that she had added the companies to a state-court lawsuit filed last spring against Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, and several opioid distributors.
Bondi said in a press release that CVS and Walgreens “played a role in creating the opioid crisis”. She said the companies failed to stop “suspicious orders of opioids” and “dispensed unreasonable quantities of opioids from their pharmacies”. On average, about 45 people die nationally each day because of opioid overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Paradise fire is catastrophic. And the wildfire threat to California is only growing.
The ingredients that fueled the deadly wildfire were brewing for years. Residents only had minutes to flee.
By
Brook Jenkins moved to the town of Paradise to escape a rough neighborhood in nearby Chico and raise her three children in an idyllic small town, filled with trees. Paradise isn’t next to a forest; it’s in a forest. Trees run between houses like gargantuan picket fences.
“It was peaceful up there,” Jenkins said. “It was beautiful.”
Yet those elegant towering Gray pines, cottonwoods, and walnut trees that drew people to Paradise also posed an immense risk of catching on fire. Six years of drought, including the driest period in California history, collided with bark beetle infestations that started spreading in rapidly in 2010, killing off scores of the state’s iconic giants.
A BOUNDLESS BATTLEFIELD
What Happens When a Barrio 18 Soldier Tries to Leave the Gang
BENJAMIN SUSPECTED THE Salvadoran gang Barrio 18 Revolucionarios would kill him when he asked permission to leave. He was 21 years old and had been in the gang for a decade. He was ready to die to get out.
He had joined at age 12 because his world didn’t feel right. He thought the gang looked cool by comparison; it took him years to name the deeper attraction. Neighborhoods like his were violent places where no one made a living wage, and the justice system was absent except to punish. Kids like him were either ignored or treated like criminality coursed through their veins. But not if he was Barrio 18. The gang, with its brotherhood and strict rules, promised him protection and stability. Here were his wafer-thin options: Benjamin could remain passive, buffeted by the winds of danger and impunity. Or he could do something proactive. He chose to act.
Spat over WWII brothels shows Japan's trouble in facing past
By MARI YAMAGUCHI
A journalist close to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has defended her view that Korean women who were sent to Japanese wartime military brothels were not sex slaves, and accused a newspaper of fabrication.
One of the Asahi newspaper's reporters said Thursday that the journalist's comments triggered threats against him and had interfered with the settlement of the issue between Japan and South Korea.
Their public spat — a defamation suit by reporter Takashi Uemura against journalist Yoshiko Sakurai — highlights Japan's struggle to come to terms with its wartime atrocities more than 70 years after World War II.
Tijuana mayor: Caravan influx to last at least 6 months
ELLIOT SPAGAT,Associated Press
With about 3,000 Central American migrants having reached the Mexican border across from California and thousands more anticipated, the mayor of Tijuana said Friday that the city was preparing for an influx that will last at least six months and may have no end in sight.
Juan Manuel Gastelum said there were 2,750 migrants from the caravan in Tijuana and that estimates by Mexico's federal government indicate the number could approach 10,000.
"No city in the world is prepared to receive this — if I'm allowed — this avalanche," he said during a news conference at City Hall. "It is a tsunami. There is concern among all citizens of Tijuana."
No comments:
Post a Comment