Flooding danger isn’t over in wake of deadly storm: ‘Do not drive through water,’ governor pleads
Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(FRANKFORT, Ky.) — The rain may have stopped, but Kentucky’s governor warned the danger isn’t over from the four days of deadly storms that devastated the central U.S. with catastrophic flooding and destructive tornadoes.
Many roads remain flooded and some rivers and creeks are at or above flood stage, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said at a news conference Monday.
“Do not drive through water, do not move barricades,” Beshear pleaded.
He stressed that even when water is receding, it’s still dangerous to drive.
Twenty people have died since Wednesday from the storms, with the fatalities spanning Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Georgia, Arkansas, Mississippi and Indiana.
Two of the 20 deaths were in Kentucky: a woman and a 9-year-old boy who both died in the floodwaters, the governor said.
The governor said the death toll may have been higher if not for the swift water rescue teams.
One person last seen boating in floodwaters has been reported missing in McCracken County, Kentucky, Beshear said.
The rainfall from these storms was historic. More than 15 inches of rain deluged Benton, Kentucky — the most rain on record in a four-day period for the western part of the state — and over 14 inches of rain inundated Arkansas and Tennessee.
Some rivers are expected to continue to rise this week. Up to 40 river gauges across the region are forecast to be in the flood stage.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” said Michael Muller, the judge/executive in hard-hit Franklin County, Kentucky, about 30 miles outside of Lexington.
“Stay at home, help your neighbors, don’t be out if you don’t have to be out,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has announced a new website, Floodsmart.gov, to help people directly access flood insurance quotes.
“It’s quick and easy and takes just a few minutes. Insured survivors recover faster,” Cameron Hamilton, senior official performing the duties of FEMA administrator, said in a statement. “With spring flooding and hurricane season both approaching fast, it’s important to take this first step so you can better protect the life you’ve built.”
ABC News’ Max Golembo and Luke Barr contributed to this report.
(MIAMI) — Two people are dead after Florida authorities alleged a Miami-Dade Transit bus driver pulled out a weapon and opened fire on a bus during a disturbance.
The shooting erupted just before 3 a.m., when a Miami-Dade Transit bus driver was involved in a disturbance with two male passengers aboard the bus, Officer Diana Delgado of the Miami Gardens Police Department said at a news conference Sunday.
During the disturbance, the bus driver pulled out a weapon and opened fire, shooting the men, according to Delgado.
The two passengers were taken to HCA Florida Aventura Hospital in critical condition and later died from their injuries, according to police.
ABC affiliate TV station WPLG reports both of the shooting victims were male.
It was unclear, according to authorities, whether the bus was moving at the time of the shooting or how many passengers were aboard the bus.
The driver is being detained by police, Delgado said Sunday.
(LOS ANGELES) — California has just experienced one of its worst wildfire seasons in years, despite the Golden State’s ample resources to combat the blazes once they spark.
The Palisades and Eaton fires, while both mostly contained as of Wednesday, are still active in Los Angeles County after starting on Jan. 7 and burning through tens of thousands of acres and killing at least two dozen people — and new fires have popped up as the region’s landscape remains dry and filled with fuel.
California is the best-equipped state in the country to combat wildfires, experts told ABC News. But even with the availability of personnel, equipment and the most advanced technology, other factors — some exacerbated by climate change — often make it impossible to contain fires before they cause widespread destruction.
Firefighting resources in California are abundant
The state often experiences the most fire activity in the U.S., leading the country with the most wildfires and the most acres burned, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) says it responds to an average of 7,500 wildfire incidents annually.
But California contains a “spider web” of different fire control, fire management and fire agencies that all come together to combat large wildfires, like the fires that decimated large portions of Los Angeles and Ventura counties in recent weeks, Hugh Safford, a research fire ecologist at the University of California, Davis, told ABC News.
These agencies include local fire departments run by municipalities, which contain firefighters trained not only in urban, or structural, fires but wildland fires, as well. Combined with state and federal efforts — which include Cal Fire, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service — California contains not only the most firefighters in the country but also the most highly trained, Safford said.
“The Forest Service has, by far, the largest firefighting organization of all of those, because it manages most of the nation’s forests,” Safford said. “It deals with most of the areas in which fire risk to ecosystems and to humans is most extreme.”
Considering the wildfire risk to human lives, property and wildlands, California has a vast budget for fighting wildfires. Cal Fire was given a $4 billion budget for the 2025 to 2026 season, and operating budgets are always subject to increase in the event of a big fire year, Safford said. Of the Forest Service’s $3 billion annual fire suppression budget, most of it is spent in California, he added.
That budget allows for the best equipment, such as helicopters and other machinery, to be implemented during firefighting efforts, Safford said. With Silicon Valley in proximity, the latest technologies in firefighting are also readily available, he added.
“A lot of that new technology is being tested and used here to begin with,” Safford said.
Despite ample resources, putting out fires can still be difficult, experts say
Wildfires have been getting bigger and more extreme in the last several decades, research shows. The frequency and intensity of extreme wildfires have more than doubled in the last two decades, a study published last year in Nature Ecology & Evolution found. A climate that has caused warming and drying in regions already prone to wildfires is partly to blame.
In California, annual wildfires are burning five times more land than in the 1970s, according to a 2019 study published in Advancing Earth and Space Sciences.
“Climate change has made California hotter and drier,” said Emily Fischer, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University and a member of Science Moms, a nonpartisan group of climate scientists and mothers that says it aims to build a better future for kids. “That just makes it easier for fires to start and spread, and that means a larger area is burning every year,” she said.
While wildfires are a natural and necessary part of Earth’s cycle, climate change and other more direct human influences have increased their likelihood. Firefighters are battling blazes that could now be considered “unnatural” due to their severity, making them harder to contain before they cause widespread damage.
Safford, who used to work for the U.S. Forest Service, said he’s witnessed the rise in wildfires firsthand, in terms of cost. In the year 2000, fire suppression accounted for about 20% of the Forest Service’s annual budget, he said. Now, firefighting is taking up about 70% of the agency’s budget, he said.
That increase in fire suppression needs has taken away from the Forest Service’s other responsibilities, such as restoration, recreation, conservation and law enforcement, Safford said.
“We’re burning communities and forests down at a scary rate these days,” he said.
In the case of the Los Angeles wildfires, their inception was caused by a perfect storm of weather and climate conditions — including a Santa Ana wind event that brought hurricane-force winds to the region, as well as plentiful fuel left from two consecutive wet winters followed by months of drought conditions.
The co-occurrence of these events could potentially take place more frequently in the future, further increasing the risk of fires in California, Lei Zhao, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Illinois, told ABC News.
“Climate change trends, the extremes and climate variability contribute to this situation,” Zhao said. “All those things are likely to be exacerbated in the future.”
(NEW YORK) — Some U.S. states could be treated to a northern lights display thanks to a minor geomagnetic storm on the sun, according to space forecasts.
Another round of aurora borealis is expected on Thursday night, with a predicted Kp index of magnitude four out of nine, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center.
The northernmost states in the U.S. have the highest chances of seeing the northern lights, including Alaska, Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, NOAA’s aurora viewline map shows.
In October, the sun’s magnetic field reached its solar maximum in its 11-year cycle, according to NASA. When sunspots produce a solar flare, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are bursts of magnetized plasma emitted from the sun’s corona, travel toward Earth as part of the solar wind, manifesting in a dazzling light show of luminous greens and pinks as the material interacts with Earth’s magnetic field.
The lead-up to the solar maximum resulted in the best northern lights display in 500 years in May, when a series of powerful solar storms made the lights visible as far south as Alabama.
Another strong geomagnetic storm in November made the auroras visible even in light-polluted cities like New York City.
Sunspots with intense magnetic activity are predicted to occur through the end of the solar maximum, which is expected to last until March 2026, according to NOAA.
The best times to view the northern lights are in the hours just before and after midnight, between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. local time, according to NOAA.
Smartphones and digital cameras are more sensitive to the array of colors and can capture the light shows even if they’re not visible to the naked eye, NASA says.
If you’re curious whether the northern lights will be visible where you live, the citizen science platform Aurorasaurus allows users to sign up for alerts. The app also sends alerts that northern lights are being seen in real time, based on user reports.
