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    Avalanche Buries Road Workers’ Camp in India, Killing 8

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    Rescuers working in extreme conditions evacuated 46 other construction workers trapped beneath feet of snow.Eight road construction workers died after becoming trapped under an avalanche in northern India, the Indian Army said on Sunday. Rescuers operating in several feet of snow evacuated 46 other workers.The workers were buried by the snow early on Friday in the village of Mana, in the state of Uttarakhand, as the avalanche hit their camp site.Disaster response teams coordinated the rescue efforts under extreme weather conditions, and the work was halted several times because of incessant snowfall and rain. GPS, sniffer dogs and thermal imaging cameras were used to find the workers.India’s Meteorological Department warned of the possibility of further avalanches in the area, which is known as a gateway for Himalayan mountain trekking.The rescued workers, many in critical condition, were taken by helicopters to hospitals in neighboring Joshimath. The workers belong to the Border Roads Organization, a division of the Indian armed forces that develops and maintains road networks in India’s border areas.Mana sits at an altitude of 3,200 meters, or more than 10,000 feet, and is about 15 miles from the Tibetan border. During the winter months, the village’s entire population migrates to lower elevations to escape the snowfall.Uttarakhand is prone to avalanches and floods. One of the country’s worst natural disasters took place there in 2013, when flooding killed more than 1,000 people. In 2021, 11 people died when an avalanche hit a Border Roads Organization camp in the district that includes Mana.As the Uttarakhand rescue efforts were completed, an operation to reach eight workers trapped in a tunnel in southern India were still underway, more than a week after the tunnel’s ceiling collapsed. Officials have said that the workers’ chances of survival are very remote. More

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      Chile Declares Curfew as Power Outage Sweeps Across Country

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      President Gabriel Boric said electricity was being restored, but the situation remained unstable. Chile’s government imposed a curfew and declared a state of emergency in response to a sweeping blackout that cut electricity to most of the country including the capital, Santiago, on Tuesday.The massive outage, which began in the afternoon, affected eight million households across the country, from the northern port city of Arica to Los Lagos in the country’s south, officials said. In Santiago, it knocked out traffic lights, stranded people in elevators and shut down the subway network.Hours later, the government announced a curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. in the regions affected by the outage. Schools in those regions will be closed on Wednesday, with about 300,000 students affected, officials said.“Today has been a difficult day for millions of countrymen,” Gabriel Boric, the president, said at a news conference on Tuesday night.By late Tuesday, power had been restored to about four million households, Mr. Boric said. But he warned that the recovery was slow and unstable, and the situation remained precarious.He blamed the country’s power companies for allowing the outage to occur and for not restoring power earlier, adding, “This is outrageous.” The outage was caused by failure of a transmission system, officials said.Soldiers and national police officers were sent to affected regions, officials said, and in Santiago, helicopters circled above the city.Emergency services, hospitals, prisons and airports across the country were operating on backup electricity systems and generators, the national disaster agency said.John Bartlett More

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      Trump Team Plans Cuts at HUD Office That Funds Disaster Recovery

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      The Trump administration plans to all but eliminate the office that oversees America’s recovery from the largest disasters, raising questions about how the United States will rebuild from hurricanes, wildfires and other calamities made worse by climate change.The Office of Community Planning and Development, part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, pays to rebuild homes and other recovery efforts after the country’s worst disasters, such as Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and Hurricane Milton in Florida.The administration plans to cut the staff in that office by 84 percent, according to a document obtained by The New York Times. The number of workers would be cut to 150, from 936 when Mr. Trump took office last month.Those cuts could slow the distribution of recovery money to North Carolina and other recent disasters, depending how quickly they happen.“HUD is carrying out President Trump’s broader efforts to restructure and streamline the federal government to serve the American people at the highest standard,” a spokeswoman for the department, Kasey Lovett, said in a statement. The primary responsibility for rebuilding communities after major disasters falls to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which helps state and local governments pay to repair or rebuild damaged roads, bridges, schools, water treatments plants and other public infrastructure. The agency also provides money to help repair damaged homes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      USAID Climate Programs Fighting Extremism and Unrest Are Closing Down

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      Numerous programs aimed at averting violence, instability and extremism worsened by global warming are ensnared in the effort to dismantle the main American aid agency, U.S.A.I.D.One such project helped communities manage water stations in Niger, a hotbed of Islamist extremist groups where conflicts over scarce water are common. Another helped repair water-treatment plants in the strategic port city of Basra, Iraq, where dry taps had caused violent anti-government protests. The aid group’s oldest program, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, ran a forecasting system that allowed aid workers in places like war-torn South Sudan to prepare for catastrophic floods last year.The fate of these programs remains uncertain. The Trump administration has essentially sought to shutter the agency. A federal court has issued a temporary restraining order. On the ground, much of the work has stopped.“They were buying down future risk,” said Erin Sikorsky, director of the Center for Climate and Security and a former U.S. intelligence official. “Invest little today so we don’t have to spend a lot in the future when things metastasize.”The German government this week released a report calling climate change “the greatest security threat of our day and age,” echoing a U.S. intelligence report from 2021, which described climate hazards as “threat multipliers.”Some U.S.A.I.D. funding supported mediation programs to prevent local clashes over land or water. For instance, as the rains become erratic in the Sahel, clashes between farmers and cattle herders become more frequent.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Here We Go Again’: Kentucky Residents Face More Destruction and Anxiety From Storms

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      The flood damage over the weekend was not as catastrophic as some previous climate disasters in the state. But the rains still brought widespread havoc, and painful reminders of trauma.As the rains began to drench Eastern Kentucky this weekend, Mimi Pickering looked anxiously out her window in the town of Whitesburg as the North Fork Kentucky River kept rising, and rising, and rising.Would it once again swallow the bridge that leads to the historic Main Street? And would the media and arts education center where she is a board member be damaged, as it was a few years before?“It just looked so much like the 2022 flood — it felt just like, ‘Here we go again, this is unbelievable,’” Ms. Pickering, a filmmaker, said. “It’s been traumatic for people when it rains so heavily — it just adds to that PTSD.”By Sunday, a clearer picture had begun to emerge of the destruction caused by the storms: At least nine people dead throughout the state, with the death toll expected to rise. Nearly 40,000 people without power. More than 1,000 rescues. At least 300 road closures of state and federal roads. Two wastewater systems out of service, including one that was underwater.And more grim news was likely, Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky said during a news conference on Sunday, warning that a snowstorm was expected in the next few days that could dump as much as six inches. He urged Kentuckians to stay home and allow emergency boats, vehicles and workers to reach people in need.“This is one of the most serious weather events that we’ve dealt with in at least a decade,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Southern California Braces for Storm Damage in Wildfire Areas

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      An intense storm could cause flooding and debris flows in areas burned by wildfires. Some residents have begun to evacuate.A large swath of California was bracing Thursday for an intense bout of rain that could lead to flooding and cause debris flows in areas recently burned by wildfires.The Southern California regions scorched by flames last month were of particular concern because the soil in those areas can repel water and allow sheets of water to race downhill, collecting debris along the way.In the Los Angeles area, about two inches of rain was expected over the next two days, but some parts of Southern California could receive more than four inches, according to the National Weather Service office in Oxnard, Calif. A torrent of rain within a short period could pose particular problems.“It’s looking like we’re going to be seeing the highest amount of rain that we’ve had in a single storm so far this season,” Lisa Phillips, a meteorologist with the Weather Service, said. Some officials in Southern California began to issue evacuation warnings and orders on Wednesday. In Santa Barbara County, the sheriff’s office ordered evacuations in areas in and around the burn scar of the Lake fire, which burned more than 38,000 acres last year. Residents under the order were told to leave by 3 p.m. on Wednesday, and those who chose not to evacuate were told to prepare to sustain themselves for several days if they had to shelter in place.Track the Latest Atmospheric River to Hit the West CoastUse these maps to follow the storm’s forecast and impact.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Strong Storm in San Francisco Brings a Tornado Warning

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      Less than two weeks after a tsunami warning, residents were jolted awake before 6 a.m. to consider a new potential disaster scenario.Powerful storms swept through parts of Northern California on Saturday, knocking down trees, causing widespread power outages and prompting weather officials to issue what they said was the first-ever tornado warning for San Francisco.The warning blared from cellphones around 5:45 a.m., jolting residents across the city from their sleep and into the sudden realization that many had long prepared themselves for what to do in the case of a sudden earthquake, but not a tornado.And it came less than two weeks after a similar alert echoed across the Bay Area warning of a different kind of disaster scenario: an impending tsunami that forecasters worried could strike along a vast stretch of the Northern California coast.That warning had been spurred by an earthquake in the Pacific Ocean and briefly caused a panic as people sought to get to higher ground. The warning was canceled a little more than an hour after it was issued.The tornado warning on Saturday, which was in effect for about 30 minutes, was urgent: “Take shelter now in a basement or an interior room,” it read in part.“That is the first time that we’ve issued a tornado warning for San Francisco,” said Crystal Oudit, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in the Bay Area. She said the service had done so after seeing conditions that tend to favor tornadoes as the storm approached the city.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Republicans Would Regret Letting Elon Musk Ax Weather Forecasting

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      One way Donald Trump may try to differentiate his second term from his first is by slashing the federal work force and budget and consolidating and restructuring a host of government agencies.For people who care about weather and climate, one of the most concerning proposals on the table is to dismantle the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The authors of Project 2025, a blueprint for the administration crafted by conservative organizations, claim erroneously that NOAA is “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry” and should be “broken down and downsized.” An arm of Mr. Trump’s team, the Department of Government Efficiency, to be led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, wants to eliminate $500 billion in spending by cutting programs whose funding has expired. That could include NOAA.With the rising costs of and vulnerability to extreme weather in a changing climate for the United States, dismantling or defunding NOAA would be a catastrophic error. Rather, there is a golden opportunity to modernize the agency by expanding its capacity for research and innovation. This would not only help Americans better prepare for and survive extreme weather but also keep NOAA from falling further behind similar agencies in Europe. While the incoming administration may want to take a sledgehammer to the federal government, there is broad, bipartisan support for NOAA in Congress. It is the job of the incoming Republican-controlled Congress to invest in its future.NOAA was established via executive order in 1970 by President Richard Nixon as an agency within the Department of Commerce. Currently its mission is to understand and predict changes in the climate, weather, ocean and coasts. It conducts basic research; provides authoritative services like weather forecasts, climate monitoring and marine resource management; and supports industries like energy, agriculture, fishing, tourism and transportation.The best-known part of NOAA, touching all of our daily lives, is the National Weather Service. This is where daily forecasts and timely warning of severe storms, hurricanes and blizzards come from. Using satellites, balloon launches, ships, aircraft and weather stations, NOAA and its offices around the country provide vital services like clockwork, free of charge — services that cannot be adequately replaced by the private sector in part because they wouldn’t necessarily be profitable.For most of its history, NOAA has largely avoided politicization especially because weather forecasting has been seen as nonpartisan. Members of Congress from both parties are highly engaged in its work. Unfortunately, legislation introduced by Representative Frank Lucas, Republican of Oklahoma — a state with a lot of tornadoes — that would have helped NOAA to update its weather research and forecasting programs passed the House but languished in the Senate and is unlikely to move forward in this session of Congress. However, in 2025 there is another opportunity to improve the agency and its services to taxpayers and businesses.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Loss and Damage Fund Is Taking Shape at COP Climate Talks

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      The U.N. climate summit in Azerbaijan has cleared the for way aid to flow when lower-income countries are hit.A long-awaited fund designed to help lower-income countries respond to natural disasters is finally taking shape at the U.N. climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.Wealthy nations agreed to create the fund at the 2022 climate summit in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, after decades of resistance. Last year, a group of nations, including the United States and the European Union, made the first financial commitments.Now, the fund has a leader and is looking to start distributing money within the next year.Ibrahima Cheikh Diong, who has Senegalese and American citizenship and has held roles at financial firms and at development banks, started this month as the inaugural executive director of the initiative, which is formally known as the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage.At this year’s climate summit, known as COP29, formal agreements were signed that will allow the fund to begin formally receiving the money that has been pledged and to start distributing it soon. The fund is being managed by the United Nations, and the World Bank is serving as a financial trustee.Sweden this month became the latest country to make a pledge, with its $19 million contribution bringing total commitments to around $720 million.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More