TV News LIES

Evacuations have been ordered for areas along California’s famous Big Sur coast as a wildfire burns in the nearby steep, rugged mountains.

The Timber fire in Monterey county started on Sunday and grew to nearly 3,000 acres by Tuesday evening, according to Cal Fire, the state’s fire agency. Nearly 500 fire personnel had been assigned to the fire in the Los Padres national forest.

The evacuations have affected famed tourist destinations such as the Nepenthe restaurant, the Henry Miller Memorial Library and the Alila Ventana resort, as well as state parks during the region’s busiest season. Part of the Pacific Coast Highway in Monterey county was closed for non-residents, and officials urged visitors to avoid the area entirely.

Firefighters worked to build containment lines along the Highway 1 corridor, Cal Fire said on Monday, and have boxed in 5% of the blaze. Ground crews are working to access difficult terrain, the agency said, but the fire is moving slowly, burning primarily along the ground through grass, brush and oak woodland and has not moved into the tree tops.

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A powerful 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck western Colombia on Monday, killing at least 111 people, damaging hundreds of buildings and leaving many trapped under debris while their loved ones and rescue workers searched through rubble.

Search teams and civilians picked through the remains of destroyed buildings in the country’s third-largest city, Cali, passing large pieces of concrete and other rubble down a long line of volunteers.

“Our building has basically been left in ruins, and the building next to ours? Completely collapsed,” said Álvaro López, who cradled his dog as he watched the search. The desperate scene recalled the searches still ongoing in neighboring Venezuela weeks after that country was devastated by two powerful earthquakes.

Besides Cali, the quake ravaged cities across western Colombia, including Pereira, Quibdo and Manizales, and was felt in neighboring Ecuador and Panama. The epicenter was in San Jose del Palmar, a community of about 4,800 people in the Choco region about 250 miles (400 kilometers) west of Bogota, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

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Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States, has plummeted to its lowest water level since it was filled some 90 years ago, the latest sign of a deepening water crisis in the American west.

Water levels at the reservoir, which straddles the Arizona-Nevada border outside Las Vegas, hit 1,040.4ft (317.1 meters) above sea level on Friday, according to federal data. That’s just below the record set on 28 July 2022, according to the US Bureau of Reclamation.

The reservoir is a critical storage system on Colorado River, a massive waterway that supBut the Colorado River basin is facing enormous pressure due to a combination of overuse, prolonged drought and extreme heat, and a lack of snowmelt to replenish the river. Lake Powell, the second major reservoir on the Colorado River, is also at historic low levels.

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Construction crews building a border wall in New Mexico were ordered to stop drilling new wells after ranchers said that pumping groundwater to produce concrete could threaten their livestock amid a severe drought.

The order comes as crews across the southern border race to complete one of Donald Trump’s key domestic priorities – barriers that span four states and received over $46bn in federal funding. Controversies have sprouted up in Texas and California, and border-town residents and environmentalists have reported a wide variety of issues with construction.

At a public meeting in July, ranchers said they were noticing unmonitored tapping of border aquifers that threatened the water for those nearby.

“It would put us in an immediate catastrophe and having to do something with our livestock. I mean, it could potentially put some people out of business, us included,” said Russell Johnson, a cattle rancher whose property runs along the border.

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Three major wildfires burning near Spokane, Washington, caused authorities to declare a state of emergency and forced thousands of people to evacuate.

The Old Trails, Fairview and Autumn Lane fires have scorched over 7,700 acres with 0% containment as of 2:45 p.m. ET on Aug. 2, Benjamin Cossel – public information officer for the California Interagency Incident Management Team 7 – confirmed to USA TODAY. Cossel said that more than 600 structures have been destroyed by the fires, a number that he said is likely to rise. He added that Autumn Lane was the "fire of concern" for Aug. 2.

Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson declared a statewide emergency and burn ban on Aug. 1. Multiple areas of Spokane are under a Level 3 evacuation order, the highest level in the state. About 5,000 homes have been evacuated, according to the Associated Press.

"We urge residents of Spokane to heed evacuation orders and to stay alert to changing conditions and evacuations as they are rapidly changing," Courtney James, spokesperson for the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, told CBS News.

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A heatwave scorching the western US region has elevated the risk of hazardous fire conditions particularly in parts of Oregon and Washington, where low humidity and powerful winds have put officials on alert for wildfire spread.

The National Weather Service has forecast blistering temperatures through early next week that could climb from 110F to 120F across the south-west. In the Pacific north-west, highs reaching into the 90s are expected in the days to come.

Several western states are dealing with devastating wildfire seasons.

In Oregon, about 1.8m acres (730,000 hectares) have reportedly been torched, as of July.

A rare “particularly dangerous situation” was assigned to a red flag warning in effect for eastern Oregon on Saturday, where weather officials have forecast gusts of wind from 30-40mph.

In Washington, more than 1,000 fires have torn through roughly 425,000 acres, a level of destruction not seen since 2021, according to the state department of natural resources. State officials are also working to contain 12 large fires that cumulatively have set more than 200,000 acres ablaze.

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The sky outside is hazy orange, and my five-year-old son is screaming bloody murder. “Sorry, buddy, we have to stay inside,” I say. “It’s not safe to breathe out there.” I had told him we’d be going to the beach today. Something inside me tears a little as I wonder how many promises he’ll see similarly broken in the coming years.

Far too many parents were forced to have some version of this conversation with their children this month, as smoke from record-breaking wildfires poured across the midwest and north-east. Some of them already had to tell their kids that their Fourth of July festivities were canceled because of the lethal heatwave that caused numerous mass casualty events earlier this month.

According to scientists, these extreme weather events are not “natural” disasters. A team of researchers already published a study finding that the Fourth of July heat wave would have been “virtually impossible” but for the climate crisis. Other studies – using methods recently validated by the National Academy of Sciences, the country’s top scientific advisory body – found that the pollution from individual big oil companies such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP made some past climate-exacerbated heatwaves at least 10,000 times more likely compared with preindustrial levels.

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Large swaths of Central Oregon have become consumed by wildfire, with several blazes burning across the region simultaneously, forcing thousands to evacuate and further stretching the state’s limited firefighting resources.

Over the weekend, the Bench Fire just west of Madras quickly grew to more than 20,000 acres with 0% containment. That led to Level 3 “Go Now” evacuation orders for the entirety of Warm Springs and other areas of Jefferson County.

Officials said Monday at least six homes and five outbuildings had been destroyed.

The Beachcomb Fire, also located near the reservation, combined with the Bench Fire by Sunday. On Monday morning, officials announced the two fires were together being called the Bench Fire and had collectively burned more than 40,000 acres.

Highway 26 was temporarily closed at one point over the weekend between Warm Springs and Madras as firefighters worked to get the fire under control. The highway closed again Sunday between Prineville and John Day, except to local traffic and local deliveries, and had not reopened as of Monday morning.

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