Free Republic

America's biggest home insurance company has announced it will no longer insure houses in California, saying that the risk from wildfires was too great and the cost of rebuilding too high. State Farm, the nation's biggest car and home insurer by premium volume, said existing customers would not be affected. But from Saturday, no new home insurance policies will be issued. The company will continue offering auto insurance. State Farm said it 'made this decision due to historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing catastrophe exposure, and a challenging reinsurance market.' In its statement, State Farm said it...

The province of Alberta, Canada, home to more than four million people, is under a state of emergency, as nearly 100 wildfires burn, dozens of them out of control. Since the first local state of emergency was declared on 4 May, over 782,000 hectares of land - 1.9 million American football fields or more than 3,000 square miles - have burned, local officials said. -excerpt- Still, there are 93 active wildfires in Alberta as of 12:00 EST (17:00 BST) on Friday, and experts say the end is nowhere in sight

California state parks have announced prescribed burns for Wilder Ranch State Park starting Nov.25 through Sunday, Dec. 3, depending on conditions. Some trails will be closed temporarily for public safety, including portions of the Eucalyptus Loop, Old Cabin and Long Meadow Trail. According to park officials, the burn will be for vegetation management, hazardous fuel load reduction, wildlife habitat improvement and other ecological benefits. Officials say the prescribed burn will enhance the health of the forest by removing duff, leaf litter and fuel buildup and restore essential nutrients to the soil and reduce the chance of wildfires. The burns will...

President Biden blamed wildfires on climate change during his speech Tuesday at the Summit on Fire Prevention and Control. “And when the impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly evident, we’re calling on you more and more and more,” the president said, speaking to firefighters. “Extreme heat and prolonged drought have turned wildfire season into wildfire years, and local firefighters are being called in more to respond to the fires in the wildland urban interface where we’re moving out into the forest areas to develop and it becomes local and federal.” The president said that the Inflation Reduction Act “enables...

SANTA FE — President Joe Biden plans to visit Santa Fe next weekend for a briefing on the wildfires ripping through New Mexico — one of which has grown to 317,000 acres, an area larger than Los Angeles. The president is set to meet June 11 with state officials, first responders and families affected by the fires, according to the White House. It will be Biden’s first visit to New Mexico as president and the state’s first presidential visit since September 2019, when Donald Trump held a rally in Rio Rancho. Biden next week will visit the state Emergency Operation...

Crews fighting the Calf Canyon-Hermits Peak Fire are up against high winds again, and because of those winds, they won’t be getting any air support. The fire is inching north, jumping the fire line on Highway 518 that firefighters have been trying to hold for weeks. The communities north of Holman are now being told to leave immediately.

MORA, N.M.—Firefighters in New Mexico failed on Friday to pin back the flames of the United States’ largest wildfire, which is burning perilously close to a string of mountain villages. The blaze is the most destructive of dozens in the U.S. Southwest that are more widespread and burning earlier than normal in the year. Thousands of people in the Mora valley, about 40 miles northeast of Santa Fe, prepared to evacuate as smoke billowed from a forest around the nearby farming community of Ledoux.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A new report from the Sacramento Sierra Club shows there were three times as many fires along the American River Parkway last year compared to 2019. It attributes the increase to climate change and the surge in homeless camps in the area over the last few years. The rise in fires happened at the same time the county stopped enforcing an ordinance against illegal camping, the report states. The change followed a federal court decision that found that local governments could not ban camping unless they were providing alternatives, like enough shelters.

VLADIMIR PUTIN is fighting a "second front" as wildfires ravage Russia distracting resources from the Ukraine invasion as the damage spreads. Thousands of acres of Siberian forest are currently experiencing the flames causing massive destruction to the region. Areas affected include Omsk, Tyumen and Krasnoyarsk, all in Siberia, and all seeing towers of black smoke in the skies. …snip According to local official Aleksey Yaroshenko, some of the forest fires are now out of control, and are more widespread than initially reported...

Evacuation orders for close to 5,000 people are still in place as firefighters battle a deadly blaze in New Mexico Douglas Siddens’ mother was among those who made it out with just the clothes on her back when a deadly, wind-fueled wildfire ripped through a mountain community in southern New Mexico. The RV park where she lived was reduced to “metal frame rails and steel wheels,” said Siddens, who managed the site “I had like 10 people displaced. They lost their homes and everything, including my mom,” he said. The fire has destroyed more than 200 homes and killed two...

Firefighters scouted the drought-stricken mountainsides around a New Mexico village on Wednesday as they looked for opportunities to slow a wind-driven wildfire that a day earlier had burned at least 150 homes and other structures while displacing thousands of residents and forcing the evacuation of two schools. Homes were among the structures that burned Tuesday, but officials did not have a count of how many were destroyed in the blaze that torched at least 6.4 square miles (16.6 square kilometers) of forest, brush and grass on the east side of the community of Ruidoso, said Laura Rabon, spokesperson for the...

A massive wildfire that broke out in South Korea's eastern coastal county of Uljin forced President Moon Jae-in to order all-out efforts to protect the nearby Hanul Nuclear Power Plant on Friday, March 4, 2022. The government issued a natural disaster alert after a wildfire broke out in the county of Uljin, North Gyeongsang Province on Friday, about 10 km (6.2 miles) from the Hanul Nuclear Power Plant.1 "Place the top priority on preventing casualties and put every possible effort into swiftly putting out the fire," Moon told officials after being briefed on the wildfire. Dozens of helicopters and about...

President Biden said Friday massive wildfires like the one that swept across parts of Colorado last week are being fueled by global warming. "Because a combination of extreme drought – the driest period from June to December ever recorded – unusually high winds, no snow on the ground to start, created a tinderbox, a literal tinderbox," Biden said in Louisville, Colorado, after touring damage left behind from the fire with local and state officials and first lady Jill.

Boulder County Office of Emergency Management has just announced an Evacuation Order for ALL of Superior, Colorado residents. Evacuation point is the South Boulder Recreation Center. The Superior Community Center is not an official evacuation location.

Several small grass fires have sparked due to downed power lines and transformers blowing, according to the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office. Authorities have also closed roads near the fires and thousands of people are reportedly out of power. The entire town of Superior and the City of Louisville have be3:10 p.m.: UCHealth Broomfield Hospital reports that it has received six patients who need fire-related medical treatment. 3 p.m.: The City of Arvada and many communities north of Denver are dealing with power outages caused by the wind and fires.en evacuated as have some nearby neighborhoods.

LACERVILLE, Calif. (AP) — A father and son charged with starting a massive California wildfire that destroyed many homes and forced tens of thousands of people to flee Lake Tahoe communities earlier this year pleaded not guilty in court Friday. The El Dorado County prosecutor's office charged David Scott Smith, 66, and Travis Shane Smith, 32, with reckless arson. The office also charged the son with illegal conversion or manufacture of a machine gun and both men of illegal possession of a firearm silencer. ...The criminal complaints do not specify how the machine gun and silencer tie into the Caldor...

Wildfires in Oregon, California, and Washington State this summer made for spectacular headlines. The media took their lead in press releases issued from the respective state capitals to blame drought—allegedly induced by man-caused climate change—for what they called the worst fires in history. But was climate change really the underlying cause? And were the fires really the worst in history? A bit of real history can be enlightening. Peshtigo is today a small city in northeastern Wisconsin, but 150 years ago it was the site of the largest and deadliest single wildfire in North American history. On October 8, 1871,...

Wildfires in Oregon, California and Washington State this previous summer made spectacular headlines. The media took their leads from press releases issued by officials in the respective state capitals. They blamed drought, allegedly induced by man-caused climate change, that affected habitually dry terrain where the fires broke out. But is it appropriate to label changing climate as the primary cause with precedents recorded much earlier? Peshtigo today is a small, peaceful city in northeastern Wisconsin that once was the site of the largest (areal) and deadliest single wildfire in North American history. On October 8, 1871, a great wildfire destroyed...

Palo Alto woman Alexandra Souverneva is suspected of lighting a fire near where the Fawn Fire started, Cal Fire announced on Thursday. Employees working near the JF Shea and Mountain Gate Quarries reported seeing a woman trespassing at the property and acting irrationally. Snip According to her LinkedIn profile, Souverneva was enrolled as a Ph.D. student in the environmental chemistry program at State University of New York College of Environmental Sciences and Forestry. Also on her page, she lists her current occupation as “shaman.”

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. (AP) — Fire officials ordered more evacuations around the Tahoe Basin as a two-week old blaze encroached on the threatened mountain towns surrounding glimmering Lake Tahoe. By nightfall, all residents on the California side of the Lake Tahoe Basin were warned to evacuate the region, after fire officials had stressed for days that protecting the area was their top firefighting priority. “Today’s been a rough day and there’s no bones about it,” Jeff Marsoleis, forest supervisor for El Dorado National Forest, said Sunday evening. A few days ago, he thought crews could halt the Caldor Fire's...