Emergency centers and fire agencies work to reduce the risk of spreading the virus as the western and south-western US brace for the inevitable
Wildfires are searing through California and states in the US south-west, as the region braces for an intense fire season complicated by the coronavirus pandemic.
With 2020 on track to be one of the hottest and driest years on record, the National Interagency Fire Center is of a higher potential for fires across much of America’s west and south-west.

The fire, which completely devastated the town of Paradise, was blamed on the company’s crumbling electrical grid
Pacific Gas & Electric confessed on Tuesday to killing 84 people in a devastating 2018 wildfire that wiped out the northern California town of Paradise in November 2018.
Bill Johnson, PG&E’s CEO, entered guilty pleas on behalf of the company for 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter stemming from the fire, which was blamed on the company’s crumbling electrical grid.

Forecasters say rain is needed for areas untouched by the 2019-20 disaster that now have an elevated fire potential
The New South Wales south coast has an elevated risk of fire this winter in areas not burnt during last summer’s devastating blazes, a new report predicts.
The Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre on Friday released its bushfire outlook for July to September.

Quake strikes in south of country but is felt more than 400 miles away in Mexico City
A 7.5-magnitude earthquake has rattled large swaths of southern and central Mexico, killing at least five people.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said one person was killed in a building collapse in Huatulco, Oaxaca, while state governor Alejandro Murat said a second person was killed in an apparent house collapse in the mountain village of San Juan Ozolotepec and a third died in circumstances he did not explain.

There was a near doubling of the record of pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCB) storms, royal commission hears
Australia experienced more supersized weather-generating fires in the 2019-20 bushfire season than in the previous 30 years, the royal commission into national natural disaster arrangements has heard.
Huge thunderstorm-type clouds called pyrocumulonimbus and are capable of generating their own winds and lightning.

Nathalia Bruno survives after being dragged into a brook channeled into a drainage system where water travels at 30mph
A New Jersey woman caught in a terrifying flash flood went whooshing on a mile-long trip under her city and ended up being shot out into a river, in a miraculous journey of survival.
Nathalia Bruno, 24, a driver for the food delivery service DoorDash, was in Passaic, New Jersey, just across the river from New York City, when sudden torrential storms hit the area and inundated streets on Monday afternoon, cutting off power to thousands of homes and trapping cars.

Royal commission hears it can be cheaper to knock down such properties and rebuild than upgrade them
Up to one million homes in bushfire-prone areas have little or no fire protection, but in some cases it would be cheaper to knock down and rebuild them than upgrade them, a royal commission has been told.
Ninety per cent of buildings in bushfire-prone areas were built before bushfire planning and construction regulations came in, the Bushfire Building Council noted.

Heavy rain that caused deadly floods in southern Japan has moved north-east, hammering large areas of the country’s main island, swelling rivers, triggering mudslides and destroying homes and roads. At least 58 over several days of flooding

Hit hard by Covid-19, Arizona faces heightened danger from smoke, flames and possible evacuations
The Wood Springs 2 fire arrived at Michelle Johnson’s home a week ago. Ash from the 13,000-acre wildfire that burned five miles away rained on her land, with thick smoke billowing above the house she shares with her husband and children.
“It would be like fog,” Johnson said. “You couldn’t open the doors and when I would come outside, I would start coughing.”

If we want to solve our complex problems we must be fully versed in the history and cultures of our combined humanity

What type of government makes decisions which will further kill off the country’s ability to equip ourselves with the skills to work out ways of adapting to major changes ahead for both our humanity and the environment?
In this most uncertain time, why would we want to stop creating better skilled people in the humanities for the nation’s workforce, or decrease the number of students who strive to accomplish the highly developed human literacy skills and emotional intelligence, empathy and cultural agility, to work for change in the world for the good of all?

Committee urges that companies must meet green standards to qualify for Covid-19 corporate bailouts
Ministers are bracing themselves for a powerful new rebuke from the government’s own advisers over the nation’s inadequate response to the climate crisis. In its annual progress report, to be published on Thursday, the Committee on Climate Change will lambast continuing failures by the government to tackle the issues of overheating homes, flash floods, loss of biodiversity and the other threats posed as our planet continues to overheat dangerously.
Last year, the committee complained that no areas of the UK’s response to the climate crisis were being tackled properly. “The whole thing is ,” said the committee’s chairman, Lord Deben.
The UK is due to host the critical UN summit next year, but its credibility as a climate leader is now under threat
Enforcing strict environmental conditions to any corporate bailouts made during the pandemic crisis, in line with standards imposed in France, Germany and Canada
Making major improvements in broadband provision and cycling routes to ensure the nation avoids a surge in car use as people return to work while trying to avoid using buses and trains
Consideration of a new tax on fossil fuels
Introducing new policies on energy efficiency in buildings, planting more trees, and protecting peatland

Heavy downpours in southern Japan, which have killed more than 50, now battering the country’s main island
Pounding rains that have already caused deadly floods in southern Japan have moved northeast, hammering large areas of Japan’s main island, swelling rivers, triggering mudslides and destroying homes and roads.
At least 58 over several days of flooding. By Wednesday morning, parts of Nagano and Gifu in central Japan were flooded by unremitting downpours.

Residents of the Navajo Nation and beyond face flames and smoke, heightening danger in area hit hard by Covid-19
The Wood Springs 2 fire arrived at Michelle Johnson’s home on last Sunday. Ash from the 13,000-acre wildfire that burned five miles away rained on her land, with thick smoke billowing above the house she shares with her husband and children.
“It would be like fog,” Johnson said. “You couldn’t open the doors and when I would come outside, I would start coughing.”

City at centre of coronavirus outbreak faces new crisis as China suffers weeks of flooding
People living in Wuhan, the central Chinese city that bore the brunt of the country’s coronavirus outbreak, have been told stay indoors once more after record rainfall prompted authorities to raise the city’s emergency response to the second highest-level.
A prolonged period of heavy rain is the latest disaster to strike China, where people are only just recovering from the coronavirus outbreak.

Almost half of the island was incinerated in January and just as the locals were catching their breath from one disaster, the coronavirus outbreak hit
Six months after the catastrophic bushfires that scorched half of Kangaroo Island, the land around Andrew and Bec Bennett’s home has slowly begun to heal.
Their sheep farm lies 12km east of the small town of Parndana and 31km west of Kingscote. Driving around, the couple point out the green shoots on the trees and the metre-high flowers rising from the ancient yakka plants that dot the landscape.

I don’t know how long all this will take to heal

Some of our volunteers won’t continue. It’s been too big, too much.

People were in limbo. What do we do with ourselves?

Exclusive: new figure far higher than previous estimates of direct impact of global heating
At least $67bn of the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 can be attributed directly to climate breakdown, according to research that could lead to a radical reassessment of the costs of damage from extreme weather.
Harvey ripped through the Caribbean and the US states of Texas and Louisiana, causing at least $90bn of damage to property and livelihoods, and killing scores of people.

At least 50 people have been killed after the river Kuma in Kyushu burst its banks, triggering floods and mudslides
Rescue workers were combing through the wreckage of houses hit by after extreme weather left more than 50 people dead or missing on the southern island of Kyushu.
The Kyodo news agency said 40 people had died in the floods and at least 11 were missing. Among the dead were 14 residents of an elderly care home in Kuma village, Kumamoto, where the nearby Kuma river flooded. More torrential rain is forecast for coming days.

Record rainfall triggers landslides in western Kumamoto region, stranding hundreds
Deep floodwaters and the risk of further mudslides that have leftmany people dead have hampered search and rescue operations in southern Japan, including at elderly home facilities where more than a dozen residents died and scores were left stranded.
Helicopters and boats rescued more people from their homes in the Kumamoto region. More than 40,000 troops, the coast guard and fire brigades took part in the operation.

Record rainfall triggers landslides in western Kumamoto region, washing bridges away and stranding hundreds
Two people died and at least sixteen others were feared dead at a nursing home in western Japan as record rainfall triggered floods and landslides, forcing authorities to issue evacuation advisories for more than 200,000 residents.
A woman and a man in their 80s in different towns in the western Kumamoto region died in mudslides, according to national broadcaster NHK and other Japanese media.

Vital information and support packages were determined by state lines, leaving some residents at risk and in need of support
The Murray River is not much of a border. In the high country east of Albury-Wodonga it cuts farms in half and leaves some, who live in New South Wales, with no choice but to drive across a bridge into Victoria if they want to leave their property.
To a farmer in Welargang or Khancoban, both in NSW, it makes more sense to drive 20 minutes to Corryong in Victoria than 40 minutes to Tumbarumba on their side of the border.