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Gas explosions drive thousands from homes in Boston suburbs

A police officer stands outside a home where a man died in a series of gas explosions in Lawrence, Massachusetts, U.S., September 14, 2018. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By Ted Siefer

ANDOVER, Mass. (Reuters) – Some 8,000 people were prevented from returning home in Boston suburbs on Friday as investigators scrambled to find out the cause of dozens of gas explosions that killed at least one person and injured about 12 more.

The blasts on Thursday destroyed scores of homes and other buildings in Andover, North Andover and Lawrence, left more than 18,000 homes and businesses without power and forced thousands of people from their homes.

A fire engine is seen near a building emitting smoke after explosions in Lawrence, Massachusetts, United States in this September 13, 2018 still image from social media video footage by Boston Sparks. Boston Sparks/Social Media/via REUTERS

Investigators suspected “over-pressurization of a gas main” belonging to Columbia Gas of Massachusetts led to the series of explosions and fires, Andover Fire Chief Michael Mansfield said on Thursday.

Massachusetts State Police said around 70 fires, explosions or investigations of gas odor had been reported.

“This has been obviously an incredibly difficult day,” Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker said in a news conference early on Friday.

Those driven from their homes “should expect that the restoration process will take several days or longer,” Andrew Maylor, the town manager of North Andover, said on Twitter.

National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt said it would likely take investigators some time to examine the pipeline’s design, maintenance, and upgrades.

“The truth of the matter is we really don’t have any factual information at this point to confirm,” Sumwalt said on Friday.

Columbia Gas, a unit of utility NiSource Inc, is investigating, NISource spokesman Ken Stammen said on Thursday. Before the explosions, Columbia Gas had said it would be upgrading gas lines in neighborhoods across the state, including the affected suburbs.

NiSource shares fell more than 9 percent on Friday morning.

A building burns after explosions in Lawrence, Massachusetts, United States in this September 13, 2018 photo from social media by Boston Sparks. Boston Sparks/Social Media/via REUTERS

SAFETY CHECKS

Firefighters raced for hours from one blaze to another and utility crews rushed to shut off gas and electricity to prevent further explosions on Thursday. Fire and utility crews were still going door to door on Friday to conduct safety checks and shut off gas meters, officials said.

Eighteen-year-old Leonel Rondon died when his car was crushed by a falling chimney, a spokeswoman for the Essex County District Attorney’s office said. Lawrence General Hospital said it had treated 13 people for injuries ranging from smoke inhalation to blast trauma.

Guilia Holland, a 35-year-old mechanic in a wheelchair, said she had just gotten off a bus returning home when she saw “a big flash of light” at the house where she had been renting a room for a month.

“Good thing I wasn’t home or I wouldn’t be talking about it,” she said outside an elementary school in Lawrence that the Red Cross had converted into a shelter for about 170 people.

South Lawrence Mayor Daniel Rivera urged residents to stay away from their homes.

“There could be still a gas leak in your home,” Rivera said. “You can’t see it and in some cases you won’t be able to smell it, and God forbid you go to sleep and don’t wake up.”

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said it was sending a team to support the state’s emergency response efforts.

“At this time, the focus remains on ensuring the public safety,” Baker said. “Once that’s complete, we will work with federal government and others to investigate how this occurred and hold the appropriate parties accountable for their actions.”

(Additional reporting by Ross Kerber and Nate Raymond in Boston; Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee and Makini Brice in Washington; editing by Larry King and Susan Thomas)

Charlottesville confronts identity one year after clashes

A U.S. flag flies from the back of a car, ahead the one-year anniversary of the fatal white-nationalist rally, in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S., August 1, 2018. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By Joseph Ax

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (Reuters) – For many residents of Charlottesville, Virginia, last year’s white nationalist rally shattered the city’s carefully curated reputation as a progressive, idyllic place to live.

But for Nikuyah Walker, an activist who was elected mayor just three months later, the violent clashes only underscored deep racial and economic inequities that have long divided this picturesque college town. In her view, the rally has forced Charlottesville to confront its own complicated legacy.

“You can have three or four generations who are struggling, and that family has not been able to move out of poverty wages – that’s a significant portion of Charlottesville,” Walker, the city’s first black female mayor, told Reuters outside City Hall. “And then you have this very wealthy community that loves and raves about it.”

As Charlottesville prepares for the one-year anniversary this weekend, it is still agonizing over clashes last year in which one woman was killed when an Ohio man drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters.

Susan Bro, mother of Heather Heyer, who was killed during the August 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, stands at the memorial at the site where her daughter was killed in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S., July 31, 2018. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Some residents have argued that the vast majority of the marchers last year were from out of town, but Walker said that narrative ignores the city’s broader problems.

She noted that the main instigators of the “Unite the Right” rally, Richard Spencer, who coined the term “alt-right” to describe the loose coalition of white nationalists, and Jason Kessler, a local blogger, graduated from the University of Virginia on the western side of town.

The rally was billed as a protest over the city council’s plan to remove two Confederate statues from downtown parks. Last year, a judge blocked the city from taking down the statues, which are encircled by orange plastic fencing and are off-limits to residents.

Several officials including the police chief, the city manager, and the city attorney left their positions after widespread criticism that Charlottesville had been ill-prepared to manage the hundreds of white nationalists who descended upon it, many armed with shields, clubs and other weapons.

“We recognize that we have to earn the community’s trust,” said Brian Wheeler, the city’s chief spokesman. “The way that we can best do that this year is learn from the mistakes.”

Local and state police have vowed to have zero tolerance for any violence this weekend, in stark contrast with last year when some officers did not intervene to break up fights. Virtually the entire downtown will be closed to vehicles.

Police have said that they are preparing for the worst, even though Kessler, who organized last year’s event, lost a bid to get a permit this year. Instead, he has received permission to rally outside the White House on Sunday and has said he will focus on Washington.

A boy passes tributes written at the site where Heather Heyer was killed during the 2017 white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S., August 1, 2018. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

A CITY AT ODDS WITH ITSELF

The effects of last year’s violence are still felt every day in Charlottesville.

City council meetings have frequently devolved into shouting matches. At a recent community outreach meeting where police officials detailed security plans for this weekend, residents asked one after another how they were supposed to trust the police after 2017.

“Charlottesville has had a tendency to self-congratulation; it’s constantly in the magazines as the best place to live,” said Reverend Will Peyton, who oversees St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

“The violence was perpetrated by outsiders, yes, but the response from the black community is like, ‘Really, this isn’t us? We don’t have a problem here?’ Because, of course, there’s entrenched inequality and entrenched structural racism,” Peyton said.

At the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center in downtown Charlottesville, an exhibit documents the struggle of black residents who fought for equal access to public education.

“I don’t know that people understood that this narrative of progressive Charlottesville had flaws,” said Andrea Douglas, the center’s executive director. “Now those flaws have been exposed.”

When Mayor Walker, 38, announced her run for city council last spring after years of activism on behalf of low-income residents, she adopted the motto “Unmasking the Illusion,” aiming to dispel the notion that Charlottesville was a diverse, liberal utopia. She has focused her attention on issues like affordable housing and policing.

Last month, she joined residents on what they called a “civil rights pilgrimage” to the lynching museum in Montgomery, Alabama, bringing along soil from a site where a black Charlottesville man was lynched in 1898.

Reverend Tracy Howe Wispelwey, a local activist, said last year’s rally was eye-opening for many in Charlottesville.

“You have a lot of white liberals who have not grappled with our history and want to dismiss it,” she said. “That’s just not truth.”

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

One killed in raging California wildfire as residents flee

Smoke and flames are seen as a wildfire spreads through Redding, California, the U.S., July 26, 2018, in this still image taken from a video obtained from social media. Cody Markhart/via REUTERS

By Fred Greaves

REDDING, Calif (Reuters) – One person was killed in a rapidly moving wildfire that sent residents fleeing from a northern California city where homes and businesses burned and power was cut on Friday, fire officials said.

A bulldozer operator was killed in the so-called Carr Fire, a blaze in Shasta County that has tripled in size in the last two days to 28,000 acres (11,300 hectares), the state’s forestry and fire protection department (Cal Fire) said.

The blaze moved east from the communities of Whiskeytown and Shasta and crossed the Sacramento River and now threatens hundreds of homes on west side of the city of Redding. Cal Fire said it ignited on Monday by the mechanical failure of a vehicle.

“The fire is moving so fast that law enforcement is doing evacuations as fast as we can. There have been some injuries to civilians and firefighters,” California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Scott McLean told the Sacramento Bee newspaper.

“It’s way too dynamic and burning quickly.”

Local and state fire officials were not available to confirm details of injuries or the extent of damage.

Roads out of the city of 90,000 people were jammed with motorists trying to escape the flames, social media postings showed.

Two residents who chose not to leave were 61-year-old Rob Wright and his wife, who planned to fight off flames from approaching their house with a high-powered water hose.

“We were fortunate enough that the wind changed about hours ago and it is pushing the fire back,” said Wright, at about 1:15 a.m. local time. “We are just waiting it out … crossing our fingers and hoping for the best.”

Smoke and flames are seen as a wildfire spreads through Redding, California, the U.S., July 26, 2018, in this still image taken from a video obtained from social media. @pbandjammers/via REUTERS

“TRYING TO MAKE A STAND”

Scorching temperatures above 100 degrees F (37 C), erratic winds and low humidity that are expected in the area could fan the blaze, which 1,700 firefighters are battling, Cal Fire and weather forecasters said.

“Right now they’re doing what they can, they’re trying to make a stand where they can, if possible,” McLean said. “It’s extreme. It’s blowing up off and on again.”

McLean added that the wildfire was in an area of rolling hills and not in “house-to-house neighborhoods.”

Video footage and images posted on social media showed flames engulfing structures as an orange glow lit up the night sky.

Residents were evacuated to a nearby college and elementary school and a local ABC news station stopped covering the fire in order to evacuate. The Mercy Medical Center in Redding evacuated its neonatal intensive care unit, it said in a statement.

Multiple power outages were reported, the city said on its website, adding that the electric utility was shutting off power in its northern areas.

California Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in Shasta and Riverside Counties on Thursday over the Carr and Cranston fires.

The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services said it had activated a state operations center to provide assistance in multiple wildfires burning in Northern and Southern California.

Two weeks ago, a firefighter was killed fighting the Ferguson Fire east of San Francisco when a bulldozer he was using to cut containment lines overturned. Seven other firefighters have been hurt.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Thai boys give a wave to the world in first video since their rescue

A screen grab shows boys rescued from the Thai cave wearing mask and resting in a hospital in Chiang Rai, Thailand from a July 11, 2018 handout video. Government Public Relations Department (PRD) and Government Spokesman Bureau/Handout via REUTERS TV

By Panu Wongcha-um and Patpicha Tanakasempipat

CHIANG RAI, Thailand (Reuters) – The first video of the Thai boys rescued from a flooded cave after 17 days was released on Wednesday, showing them smiling and waving from their hospital beds, looking thin but fine after an ordeal that has gripped the world.

The last group of the 12-member “Wild Boars” soccer team and their coach was brought out of the Tham Luang cave, near the border with Myanmar, on Tuesday night, safely ending a dangerous rescue and evoking international relief and joy.

Rescue workers and soldiers take out machine after 12 soccer players and their coach were rescued in Tham Luang cave complex in the northern province of Chiang Rai, Thailand, July 10, 2018. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

Rescue mission chief Narongsak Osottanakorn told a news conference the boys were just being children when they got lost and no one was to blame.

“We don’t see the children as at fault or as heroes. They are children being children, it was an accident,” Narongsak said.

A video of the boys in hospital was shown at the news conference. Some of them, wearing surgical masks, lay on their beds. Some sat and made the “peace sign” gesture for the camera.

None of the boys was heard speaking in the clips shown at the news conference.

The 12 boys and their soccer coach lost an average of 2 kg (4.4 lb) during their ordeal but were generally in good condition and showed no signs of stress, a senior health official said earlier.

After being brought out of the cave, one by one beginning on Sunday, they were taken by helicopter to hospital in the town of Chiang Rai, about 70 km (45 miles) away, to stay in quarantine.

The boys would have to stay in hospital for up to 10 days, hospital director Chaiwetch Thanapaisal told the news conference. They would then need to recuperate at home for 30 days, he said.

Parents of the first eight boys freed have been able to visit them but had to wear protective suits and stand 2 meters (7 feet) away as a precaution. Authorities are worried about the possibility of infections picked up in the cave.

Thongchai Lertwilairatanapong, inspector general of the public health ministry, and Chaiwetch Thanapaisal, director of the Chiang Rai Prachanukroh Hospital, attend a news conference in Chiang Rai, Thailand, July 11, 2018. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

Thongchai Lertwilairattanapong, a health department inspector, earlier told reporters one from the last group rescued on Tuesday had a lung infection and they were all given vaccinations for rabies and tetanus.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha asked that the boys be given time to recover.

“The important thing is … personal space,” Prayuth told reporters. “The best way is not to bother them and let them study.”

The group ventured into the vast cave complex in the northern province of Chiang Rai after soccer practice on June 23 and were trapped when a rainy season downpour flooded tunnels.

They were lost for nine days before British rescue divers discovered them on July 2, sitting on a ledge in a half-flooded chamber.

Getting them out – which involved teaching boys as young as 11 who were not strong swimmers to dive through narrow, submerged passages – proved a monumental challenge.

A former member of Thailand’s navy SEAL unit died during a mission in the cave on Friday.

(For a graphic on the Thai cave rescue click https://tmsnrt.rs/2KR2zRj)

‘NOT HEROES’

Narongsak, giving details of the rescue, said falling oxygen levels inside the cave complex had added a sense of urgency.

The commander of the navy SEAL unit that oversaw the rescue, Rear Admiral Apakorn Yuukongkaew, hailed the international effort.

“We are not heroes. This mission was successful because of cooperation from everyone,” he said. “For SEALs, this is what we were trained for. The navy has a motto: ‘We don’t abandon the people’.

Official help came from Britain, the United States, Japan, Laos, Myanmar, China and Australia, a government document showed. There were volunteers from Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Canada, Ukraine and Finland.

The rescue has dominated front-page headlines in Thailand and beyond for days.

“Hooyah! Mission accomplished,” read one headline, echoing the rallying cry of the SEAL unit.

The hashtag #Hooyah was hugely popular on social media with people showing their support for the hundreds of rescuers, including divers from around the world, who helped to get the boys out.

‘SO STRONG’

The fate of the boys has even resonated as far as Russia, where soccer’s World Cup is reaching its final stages. Players from France and England welcomed news of the rescue and sent their best wishes to the “Wild Boars” on Twitter.

“This victory goes to the heroes of the day, well done boys, you are so strong,” French midfielder Paul Pogba tweeted after his team beat Belgium 1-0 on Tuesday to reach the final.

Manchester City and England defender Kyle Walker, whose team faces Croatia in the second semi-final later on Wednesday, said he wanted to send shirts to the boys.

“Amazing news that all of the Thai kids are out of the cave safely!” Walker tweeted.

A Google search on Tuesday for the words “Thai cave rescue” revealed 359 million results.

(Reporting by Panu Wongcha-um, Patpicha Tanakasempipat, James Pomfret and John Geddie in CHIANG RAI; Additional reporting by Amy Sawitta Lefevre, Aukkarapon Niyomyat, Panarat Thepgumpanat and Chayut Setboonsarng in BANGKOK, and Colin Packham in SYDNEY; Writing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre and John Geddie; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel)

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