FEMA and the NFL team up to make stadiums available for disaster situations
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(NEW YORK) — As Hurricane Helene makes its way toward the northern Gulf of Mexico and possibly through Atlanta, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is turning to an unlikely partner in disaster preparations: the National Football League.
The federal agency and the NFL are teaming up to allow for NFL stadiums to be used as “mission ready locations” during major disaster events, FEMA said in a news release.
“During large-scale emergencies, like the COVID-19 pandemic, hurricanes, or tornados, we’ve seen how large music, sports and entertainment venues can serve as a safe space for communities,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said.
Criswell called the partnership with the NFL “groundbreaking” and will make communities “more resilient.”
The then-New Orleans Superdome was used as a place where people were camped out for days during and after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
FEMA says NFL stadiums are an ideal venue because of their location and access for all people. FEMA says 73% of NFL stadiums are accessible by public transportation.
The stadiums that will become Mission Ready Venues are: MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, home of New York’s Jets and Giants: Lumen Field in Seattle, home of the Seahawks; Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh, home of the Steelers; Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, home of the Buccaneers. SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, home of the Rams and the Chargers, is under review.
“Stadiums are valuable community assets that are often used in times of disasters,” said NFL Chief Security Officer Cathy Lanier, who was also the former Chief of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department. “This designation reflects the role that many stadiums play, not only on Sundays, but especially in times of need. We are proud to work with FEMA and first responders at the local and state level to ensure disaster response agencies have the information and tools they need to help a community recover when disaster strikes.”
(TALLAHASSEE, FL) — Florida officials are urging residents to evacuate now as Hurricane Milton intensifies and sets its sights on the state’s west coast.
Hours before the storm strengthened to a Category 5 hurricane on Monday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned residents to take evacuation orders seriously.
“Time is going to start running out very, very soon,” he said at a news conference.
“Please, if you’re in the Tampa Bay area, you need to evacuate,” Kevin Guthrie, executive director of Florida Emergency Management, urged at the news conference. “Drowning deaths due to storm surge are 100% preventable if you leave.”
More than 50 counties along Florida’s west coast are now under state of emergency orders and several are under evacuation orders, including Charlotte, Hillsborough, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas and Sarasota. All evacuation orders are listed on Florida’s Division of Emergency Management website.
The storm is is expected to weaken, but will still be a major Category 3 hurricane by the time it makes landfall in Florida late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.
“If you live in a storm surge evacuation zone and you’re asked to leave by your local officials, please do that,” Michael Brennan, the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center, told ABC News Live on Sunday. “You don’t have to drive hundreds of miles to get to a safe place, often just tens of miles to get inland, out of that evacuation zone, to a shelter, a friend or loved one’s home.”
Brennan also urged Floridians to prepare a disaster kit with several days’ worth of nonperishable food, water, medicine and batteries.
Ahead of landfall on Monday, President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for the state to allow federal assistance to begin supplementing local efforts.
Flooding is expected, and storm surge is a significant threat.
A record-breaking storm surge of 8 to 12 feet is expected in the Tampa Bay area, as Floridians continue cleaning up from the 6 to 8 feet of storm surge that was just brought on by Hurricane Helene.
As Milton churns closer, Tampa International Airport said it would suspend operations Tuesday at 9 a.m. and remain closed “until it can assess any damage after the storm,” airport officials said. St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport also said it would close Tuesday, and remain shuttered on Wednesday and Thursday.
The University of Florida said it would be canceling classes Wednesday and Thursday, but plan to reopen Friday morning.
(GEORGIA) — Former President Donald Trump sat down with Fox News’ Harris Faulkner on Tuesday night in front of an all-female audience in Cummings, Georgia, where he addressed several issues aimed at appealing to women voters including the child tax credit, the economy and reproductive rights — calling himself the “father of IVF.”
Speaking in front of a friendly audience of more than 100 women of all ages, Trump attempted to court suburban women in Georgia’s Forsyth County — a reliably-red county where Democrats have made gains in recent years.
Recently, Trump has worked to connect with women voters — the largest voting bloc in the 2024 election — by suggesting they’ll be “safer” under a Trump administration, that he will be a “protector” of women and they “will no longer be thinking about abortion” if he wins the White House.
During the event, which aired Wednesday morning, Trump was asked about his positions on abortion access and in vitro fertilization — key voter issues after the Supreme Court overruled Roe vs. Wade in 2022. Trump himself often brags about his role in the Supreme Court’s decision to overrule the case that secured the constitutional right to abortion.
“Oh, I want to talk about IVF. I’m the father of IVF,” Trump blurted.
Sen. Katie Britt, who introduced the IVF Protection Act, explained IVF to the former president, according to Trump.
“Within about two minutes, I understood we’re totally in favor of IVF. I came out with a statement within an hour, a really powerful statement with some experts, really powerful,” he said, adding that “we really are the party for IVF. We want fertilization.”
Trump reiterated his position on abortion where he suggested he has turned the power back to the states.
“It’s back in the states, where they can have the vote of the people. It’s exactly where they want to be. Remember this, this issue has torn this country apart for 52 years. So we got it back in the states, we have a vote of the people, and it’s working its way through the system, and ultimately it’s going to do the right thing,” Trump said.
At one point, Trump suggested that some states have to redo their abortion laws, referencing rape, incest and exceptions.
“Actually called himself the ‘father of IVF’ and if what he meant is taking responsibility, then yeah, he should take responsibility for the fact that one in three women in America lives in a Trump abortion ban state. What he should take responsibility for is that couples who are praying and hoping and working towards growing a family have been so disappointed and harmed by the fact that IVF treatments have now been put at risk,” Harris told reporters.
Trump’s comment was also quickly picked up by women championing the abortion-rights movement such as EMILY’s List and Planned Parenthood Action Fund where they called it “deeply out of touch with the vast majority of the American people.”
“Let’s call this charade what it is: a last-ditch attempt to deceive voters,” said Jessica Mackler, president of EMILYs List, calling it an “insult to women everywhere that he thinks they’ll fall for his bogus attempt to rebrand on abortion.”
Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said Trump “cannot be trusted — not with our bodies, our lives, or our futures.”
Trump also doubled down on his rhetoric where he suggested to Maria Bartiromo on Fox News that “the bigger problem is the enemy from within” when answering a question on whether he thought the November election would be peaceful.
Trump’s comments in the previous week suggest that the military would handle his political adversaries if he became president. Faulkner played the video clip during the town hall, to which Trump replied, “if we have to.”
He continued, doubling down on his rhetoric, “I thought it was a nice presentation” and saying he wasn’t “unhinged” as Harris claimed during an Erie, Pennsylvania, rally earlier this week.
“It is the enemy from within, and they’re very dangerous,” Trump said to Faulkner.
At one point in the town hall, Faulkner described the Democrats’ prebuttal of the event, mentioning the family of Amber Thurman, a Georgia woman who died of complications following her abortion in the state — with a ProPublica report saying her death was a direct result of the state’s six-week abortion ban.
Thurman’s family was on a press call with Sen. Raphael Warnock, and when Faulkner asked about that call, Trump — instead of acknowledging the Thurman family and Amber Thurman’s death — quipped that the Fox News town hall he was currently participating in would “get better ratings.”
The 28-year-old whistleblower investigated alleged wrongdoing at an Oklahoma nuclear fuel facility, and was reportedly on her way to meet a New York Times reporter when she died in a fatal car crash (Photo by mark peterson/Corbis via Getty Images).
(CRESCENT, Okla.) — The 28-year-old lab worker investigated alleged wrongdoing at an Oklahoma nuclear fuel facility, and was on her way to meet with a New York Times reporter when she died in a fatal car crash.
Fifty years ago, the death of a 28-year-old plutonium plant worker and whistleblower in Oklahoma — a death many found mysterious and sparked decades of speculation — shocked the nation.
The official story was that Karen Silkwood died in a one-car crash on Nov. 13, 1974. She was on her way to meet a New York Times journalist, reportedly to hand over documents she’d secretly been collecting at her job at a nuclear facility. The Oklahoma State Highway Patrol concluded that Silkwood fell asleep at the wheel — possibly under the influence of prescribed drugs — drove off the highway, crashed into a ditch, and died.
“We’ve never believed it,” Mike Boettcher said of the official narrative. Boettcher and his reporting partner Bob Sands, both veteran Oklahoma journalists, say many in Oklahoma speculate that Karen Silkwood may have died for what she knew.
Silkwood’s story has become widely known, inspiring several books, articles, and a major motion picture.
ABC Audio’s new podcast, “Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery,” hosted by Boettcher and Sands, explores the secrets Silkwood was uncovering and what some say is the mystery surrounding her death.
Silkwood worked at a nuclear fuel production plant that manufactured plutonium fuel rods to power a new type of nuclear reactor, which was part of a multi-million dollar experiment to enhance nuclear energy. When she noticed what she felt were unsafe working conditions — such as leaks, spills and co-workers frequently getting contaminated with radioactive material — she spoke up and tried to make improvements.
“Karen became nuclear energy’s first whistleblower, though the term whistleblower was just starting to be used,” Boettcher said. “This was at a time when the idea of someone inside of a big corporation exposing alleged misdeeds was shocking.”
Silkwood’s allegations, contamination, and untimely death sparked an investigation by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, an FBI inquiry, a civil lawsuit, several appeals, a congressional hearing and two appearances before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Several news outlets investigated the matter, and Silkwood’s story gained significant attention in 1983 with the release of “Silkwood,” a movie based on her life. In a performance that earned her an Oscar nomination, Meryl Streep portrayed Silkwood in the film.
For fifty years, this story has been one Boettcher and Sands say they can’t get out of their minds. Suspicion of foul play has swirled around it for decades: What had Silkwood uncovered? Who had she upset? Why did her car crash into a concrete wall? Was a second vehicle involved?
“There are fewer and fewer people alive to share what they know from the night Karen died,” Sands said. “Many of the people who worked with Karen in the plant are dead.”
However, Sands and Boettcher have new leads — never-before-heard investigative tapes, a fresh look at a critical piece of physical evidence. Plus, they tracked down people who can illuminate who Karen was and what she was uncovering about her workplace.
The duo first spoke with Michael Meadows, Silkwood’s son. He was only 5 years old when his mother died. “There’s never been a definitive answer,” Meadows said. “Both sides … told a very different story that night of what happened, and as her son, I would like to have a definitive answer of what really took place.”
Instead of cherished memories of his mother, Meadows was left with black-and-white photos, newspaper clippings and police reports. When he tries to picture what his mom was like, the image that comes to mind is Streep’s portrayal.
“The fact that … there’s still so many people afraid to tell what they know or what they’ve heard,” Meadows said. “It’s amazing to me that 50 years later, a company that barely even exists, if it does exist at all …still has that kind of control or that kind of intimidation.”
That company was Kerr-McGee, named after its influential leaders Robert Kerr and Dean McGee. It doesn’t exist anymore. But, in the early ’70s, Kerr-McGee was a giant in Oklahoma and in America’s oil and gas industry.
So, for Silkwood, going against her employer would be a steep hill to climb. The company maintained that allegations of malfeasance were overblown and some claims even made up by overzealous union workers.
Steve Wodka met Karen Silkwood in the early ’70s as a young staff member for the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW), which represented Silkwood and other plant workers.
Wodka recently retired from his career as an attorney advocating for people with work-related cancer. Living in a small New Jersey beach town, he spends his time trying to figure out what happened to Silkwood 50 years ago.
Silkwood had alerted him to possible problems at the plant and the union was concerned about worker safety.
“The belief is that intense radiation that goes on essentially for the rest of the person’s life causes lung cancer,” Wodka said. “So the handling of plutonium is supposed to be very strict… There’s always supposed to be a barrier between the worker and plutonium. And what was going on in this plant was that barrier was being breached on a daily basis.”
Silkwood raised some even bigger concerns about possible wrongdoing at the plant — that important quality control reports were reportedly being falsified. Concerns that, if true, meant the health and safety of a lot more people was at risk, well beyond people who worked at the plant.
The company denied contamination allegations and maintained that Silkwood was involved in a scheme to embarrass the company and improve the bargaining position of the union.
Silkwood never made it to that meeting, but after her death, interest in her story put a spotlight on the claims she was trying to make.
Boettcher, Sands, and others connected with Silkwood’s story, continue to probe for answers in a case that feels unfinished.
“Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery” is a production by ABC Audio in collaboration with Standing Bear Entertainment. Listen to the four-part podcast series for complete coverage.
