Fires and Firefighters

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    Chaos At Site of Air India Plane Crash

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    Firefighters raced to douse smoking buildings as emergency workers recovered bodies after a deadly passenger plane crash in India.Dozens of medical school students in the western Indian state of Gujarat were eating lunch on Thursday when an Air India passenger plane carrying 242 people to London crashed into their dining hall. In the aftermath of the disaster, the ripped tail of the wrecked plane could be seen jutting out of the building.At least five students died in the crash in the city of Ahmedabad, said Minakshi Parikh, the dean of B.J. Medical College, whose campus is near the end of the runway of the airport. Officials feared that the death toll at the medical campus and its neighboring buildings could be higher.“Most of the students escaped, but 10 or 12 were trapped in the fire,” Ms. Parikh said.At least 204 people were killed in the crash of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, G.S. Malik, the police commissioner of Ahmedabad, said in an interview. That makes the crash India’s deadliest aviation disaster since 1996.Verified video shows the plane descending, almost as if on a glide, and then a fireball rises in its place. Photos and verified videos from the crash site show widespread carnage as well as medical workers carrying the bodies of victims into ambulances on stretchers.Dr. Bharat Ahir, who reached the scene soon after the crash, said he had seen rescuers bringing people out of thick smoke. Inside the damaged dinning hall, he said, the meals of many of the students sat unfinished.Dt. Ahir said he feared that casualties in a nearby residential complex, a multistory block where doctors and their families live, could outnumber those at the dinning facility.“The plane’s back part is stuck in the dinning hall, and the front hit the residential building,” he said.Wreckage from the plane at the site of the crash. Amit Dave/ReutersImages emerging from the scene show the blackened tangle of the wreckage of the plane. The aircraft appeared to have broken into large pieces, with one wing lying on a roadway. Firefighters could be seen spraying burned-out buildings and sooty, cracked trees as they stepped carefully around the hunks of debris.At a nearby hospital, medical workers raced through busy rooms with empty stretchers and wheelchairs, verified video showed. Crowds of people milled about.Outside, a group of men walked through the streets with a stretcher carrying an injured person. Ambulance after ambulance drove by.Mujib Mashal More

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      Wildfire Near San Bernardino Mountains Prompts Evacuation Orders

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      The fire, which was burning near the town of Apple Valley, had exploded to 2,000 acres since starting on Tuesday afternoon.A wildfire that started on Tuesday afternoon north of the San Bernardino Mountains had exploded to 2,000 acres by nighttime, driven by high winds and low humidity, officials said. It had prompted evacuation orders and was threatening multiple properties, officials said.The vegetation fire was threatening multiple buildings in and around Apple Valley, a town of about 75,000 people about 60 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Firefighters were battling to contain the blaze, which was zero percent contained on Tuesday night.The San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department issued an evacuation order for an area about four miles wide on the edge of the town, warning of an extreme threat to life. A number of ranches appeared to be within the evacuation zone.The fire broke out at about 2:30 p.m., according to Cal Fire, and its cause was under investigation.“Fire behavior has intensified due to shifting weather conditions, including increasing winds and low humidity, contributing to rapid fire spread,” Cal Fire said in a statement.The area was experiencing wind gust of about 22 miles per hour on Tuesday night, according to the Weather Service. More

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      1 Dead After Explosion on Barge Near Manhattan Sewage Plant

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      The victim, who worked at the plant, was transporting raw sewage on the boat when part of it exploded on Saturday, the Fire Department said. The cause is under investigation.A worker at a sewage treatment facility died on Saturday after an explosion onboard a barge in the Hudson River near Upper Manhattan, the Fire Department said.The worker was an employee at the North River Wastewater Resource Recovery Facility, a sewage treatment plant just off the Henry Hudson Parkway near 138th Street. He and two other plant employees were transporting raw sewage on the barge at around 10:30 a.m. on Saturday when a compartment holding some of the waste exploded, David Simms, a deputy assistant chief with the Fire Department, said at a news conference on Saturday.The force of the explosion pushed one of the workers into the water, pinning him between the vessel and the pier and ultimately killing him, Chief Simms said. The two other employees were taken to a nearby hospital and are in stable condition, the chief said.The cause of the explosion was not immediately clear on Saturday.According to preliminary information, the burst may have been linked to so-called hot work — construction that can produce flames or sparks — that was taking place aboard the boat, said a spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard, which responded to the explosion along with several city agencies.In addition to the death, the eruption left raw sewage on the deck of the barge, Chief Simms said. But a spokesman for the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the plant, said that operations were not affected and that there did not appear to be any environmental damage.In a statement on Saturday, Mayor Eric Adams said he was devastated to learn about the worker’s death and added that no criminal behavior was suspected in the accident.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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      Palm Springs Bombing Kills 1 and Damages Fertility Clinic, Officials Say

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      The explosion on Saturday morning, which occurred in or near a vehicle less than a mile from downtown Palm Springs, Calif., was “an intentional act of terrorism,” the F.B.I. said.The mayor of Palm Springs, Calif., said it was unclear how or whether the victim was connected to a blast that damaged a fertility clinic.Kyle Grillot for The New York TimesOne person is dead and at least four are injured in the desert oasis of Palm Springs, Calif., after a bomb exploded on Saturday morning outside a fertility clinic, damaging buildings and leaving windows shattered across several blocks in what authorities called a terrorist attack.“This explosion was significant,” said Akil Davis, the assistant director in charge of the F.B.I.’s Los Angeles Field Office. “Make no mistake, this is an intentional act of terrorism.” He added that officials believed the clinic was specifically targeted. Mr. Davis said that the bureau had begun one of the largest bombing investigations ever in Southern California and that it was not yet clear whether the event had been an act of domestic or international terrorism. Authorities have identified a person of interest but did not name the person on Saturday afternoon. They also did not say whether the person who died was connected to the blast. Mr. Davis said that “we are not actively out searching for a suspect.”The explosion was in or near a vehicle parked by the clinic, according to the mayor, Ron deHarte. But many other details were unclear, including the vehicle’s make and model. All that was left of it at the scene was an axle, authorities said. The bombing was an isolated incident and the community was no longer at risk, Andy Mills, the Palm Springs police chief said.Reports of a loud boom and images of broken glass and billowing smoke began to be shared on social media around 11 a.m. local time. The blast area extended for blocks, and some buildings were severely damaged, with shattered windows visible in many restaurants, shops and apartment buildings throughout the city’s downtown.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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      Before the Fire, L.A. Tried to Restore Second Reservoir in Palisades

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      Water supplies ran dry in the Pacific Palisades fire, in part because a reservoir was shut down for repairs. Records show the city had tried and failed to prepare an alternative reservoir.Seven months before fire swept through the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, the city’s water managers were formulating a plan to revive an old reservoir to temporarily boost the area’s limited water capacity.The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power was exploring the option because the neighborhood’s main reservoir — the Santa Ynez Reservoir — had been taken offline as a result of a torn cover, which officials had begun preparations to repair early in 2024. The repair project was still months away from completion this January when the fire broke out, and with the reservoir empty, firefighters ran short of water in fighting the blaze.Emails released to The New York Times under public records law show that the city had searched for solutions to rectify the monthslong supply shortage but, despite lengthy discussions and preliminary preparations, failed to correct the problem in time.In early June 2024, crews spent several days cleaning the Pacific Palisades Reservoir, a facility that was about three miles away from the larger Santa Ynez site, and that was retired in 2013. The work, officials wrote, was “in preparation for temporarily placing the Pacific Palisades Reservoir back into service while the Santa Ynez Reservoir is out of service.”After the cleaning was completed, the crews planned more work, including disinfection of the area and installation of new pipes.But the plan to bring the old reservoir back online was never completed. Ellen Cheng, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said in an email on Friday that the city ultimately determined that bringing the reservoir back online could have posed a risk to workers and residents of nearby homes because of structural and other safety issues.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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      White Supremacist Is Charged in 2019 Arson at Tennessee Civil Rights Landmark

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      Regan Prater set fire to the main offices of the Highlander Research and Education Center and took credit for it in encrypted messages, prosecutors said.A Tennessee man with ties to several white supremacist groups has been charged with setting a fire in 2019 that destroyed the offices of a social justice center connected with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., according to court records.In a federal criminal complaint that was unsealed on April 24, the F.B.I. said that the man, Regan Prater, 27, set fire to the main offices of the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tenn., near Knoxville, and spray-painted an Iron Guard cross on the pavement outside.The symbol originated with fascists in Romania in the 1920s and 1930s, according to the Anti-Defamation League. It has more recently been used by white supremacists, including one who murdered 51 people at two mosques in New Zealand in 2019.Investigators in Tennessee said that Mr. Prater, of Tullahoma, took credit for the arson while chatting with an informant on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app that he used to communicate with other white supremacists.“I didn’t admit that, but dots can be connected,” Mr. Prater wrote to the informant when asked if he had set the fire, according to the complaint.He then gave details about how he had started the blaze, telling the informant, “It was a sparkler bomb and some Napalm.”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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      Patient Aboard an Ambulance Fatally Stabs a Firefighter Paramedic

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      The emergency worker in Kansas City, Mo., was stabbed in his chest while transporting a patient in what started as a routine call on Sunday, officials said.A member of the emergency medical services in Kansas City, Mo., died on Sunday after being stabbed by a patient who was being transported to a hospital in what officials said started out as a “routine medical call.”The patient stabbed the emergency worker, Graham Hoffman, a 29-year-old firefighter paramedic, in the chest, piercing his heart, city officials said in a news release.A suspect was in custody but had not been publicly identified. A motive for the attack was not immediately known.The episode began after Kansas City police officers were dispatched to a “routine medical call” early on Sunday to check on a woman who was reported to be walking along a section of highway near North Oak Trafficway, the police said.Officers found the woman and requested help from the emergency medical services for further unspecified treatment. While en route to the hospital, the patient “produced an edged weapon” and stabbed Firefighter Hoffman, the police said.Graham Hoffman, a firefighter paramedic, was fatally stabbed during a call in Kansas City, Mo., on Sunday.Kansas City Fire DepartmentFirefighter Hoffman’s partner called a crew emergency, and additional Fire Department and Police Department personnel responded. Firefighter Hoffman was taken to North Kansas City Hospital.“Despite the heroic efforts of KCFD paramedics, the hospital medical team, Firefighter Hoffman succumbed to his injuries in the intensive care unit,” the city said.Firefighter Hoffman had been a member of the Kansas City Fire Department since 2022, according to the news release.The police are working with the Clay County prosecutor on criminal charges, the city said.“We will demand accountability be applied not just to the suspect, but also for any steps in the system that fell short,” said Quinton Lucas, the mayor of Kansas City. More

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      Massive Iran Port Explosion Kills 4 and Injures Hundreds

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      There was no immediate indication that the blast was caused by sabotage or a deliberate attack. State media said it was likely caused by containers of chemicals catching fire.A massive explosion on Saturday at the Iranian port of Shahid Rajaee in Bandar Abbas killed several people and injured hundreds, according to state media. The exact cause of the blast was not immediately clear, although there was no suggestion of an attack or sabotage.Mohammad Rasoul Moradi/Islamic Republic News AgencyA massive explosion at a port in southern Iran on Saturday killed at least four people and injured more than 500, according to state media.The exact cause of the blast at the Shahid Rajaee port in the city of Bandar Abbas was not immediately clear. But Iranian authorities did not suggest it was sabotage or a deliberate attack.The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency quoted an official as saying the ignition of containers of chemicals most likely set off the explosion. The blast sent up clouds of black smoke, according to footage from the scene distributed by an Iranian broadcaster and video from social media that was verified by The New York Times.Bandar Abbas is strategically located along the Strait of Hormuz, a busy Persian Gulf shipping lane for the world’s oil and natural gas.In 2020, Israel launched a cyberattack that hampered operations at the Shahid Rajaee port as part of its long-running shadow war with Iran.Israeli officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday’s explosion.The explosion came around the time that American and Iranian officials began meeting in the Gulf sultanate of Oman on Saturday for a third round of talks on Iran’s nuclear program.Last week, The New York Times reported that Israel had planned to attack Iranian nuclear sites as soon as next month, but it was waved off by Mr. Trump, who wanted to negotiate an agreement with Tehran instead. But Mr. Trump has also vowed to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, including by military action if necessary. More

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      Wildfire Burns in 3,200 Acres of New Jersey Forest Area

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      The fire in the Pine Barrens led to the evacuation of 3,000 residents and the shutdown of a stretch of the Garden State Parkway.A fast-moving wildfire in the Pine Barrens section of southern New Jersey spread to 3,200 acres of the heavily forested area by the evening, prompting the shutdown of a 17-mile stretch of one of the state’s busiest highways, the authorities said.The smoky blaze, in Ocean County, threatened at least 1,320 structures, forced the evacuation of 3,000 residents of Ocean and Lacey Townships and caused the Garden State Parkway to be shut down between exits 63 and 80, the New Jersey Forest Fire Service said in a statement.Embers from the fire, which began Tuesday morning, jumped over the parkway at about 6 p.m., sparking several small blazes near a defunct nuclear power plant known as Oyster Creek, according to state officials. The plant, owned by Holtec International, shut down in 2018 and is being decommissioned.Patrick O’Brien, a Holtec spokesman, said the fires closest to the facility had been “completely and safely extinguished.”Even if a blaze were to reach an area where spent nuclear material is stored in secure casks, it poses no risk, according to Mr. O’Brien and Shawn M. LaTourette, commissioner of the State Department of Environmental Protection.All the buildings at the Oyster Creek site are “designed and constructed to withstand fires,” Mr. O’Brien said in a statement.

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