Fires and Firefighters

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      At Least 4 Killed in Suspected Gas Explosion at Taiwan Shopping Mall

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      The deadly blast occurred in a food court. The island’s president ordered an investigation into the cause.Windows and walls were blown out by the blast at the building in Taichung, the island’s second-largest city.Yufu Liao/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAt least four people were killed and 30 others injured in a suspected gas explosion in the food court of a Taiwan shopping mall on Thursday morning, according to Taiwan’s state-owned news outlet.The explosion occurred in the city of Taichung, about 100 miles southwest of Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, local officials said. The fire department received a report at 11:33 a.m. about a possible gas explosion on the 12th floor of the mall and dispatched 136 personnel, the department said in a statement. Search and rescue teams stayed on site until about 5 p.m., the news outlet, the Central News Agency, reported.Two of the people who died in the blast, and five of those injured, were tourists from Macau, the Macau Government Tourism Office said in a statement.Clearing debris after the explosion.Ritchie B Tongo/EPA, via ShutterstockIt is unclear what caused the blast, the fire department said. Video shared online by the Taiwanese station TVBS News shows an explosion in the middle floors of the building that sent debris and dust into the street. The station also aired clips from inside the building, showing shoppers reacting to a convulsion nearby and scrambling to evacuate the building.President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan, writing on his Facebook page, called for a prompt investigation into the cause of the accident. He said that the health ministry was coordinating medical resources to provide care to the injured.The explosion comes less than two months after nine people died in Taichung in a large fire at a food-processing plant that was under construction. An initial investigation by the city’s fire bureau in December found that the blaze was caused by welding sparks that ignited on paint and rapidly spread through insulation materials in the building, the Taipei Times reported.Claire Fu More

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      Trading Hope for Reality Helps Me Parent Through the Climate Crisis

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      When I gave birth to my first child, in 2019, it seemed like everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong. He came out white and limp, his head dangling off to the side. People swarmed into the hospital room, trying to suction his lungs so he could breathe. Hours later, my husband and I stood in the NICU, looking down at this newborn baby, hooked up to wires and tubes.We had spent months talking about how to protect him from various harmful influences, and here we were, an hour out of the gate, dealing with a situation we hadn’t even considered. Had his brain been deprived of oxygen for too long? Would there be lifelong damage?That night in the hospital, I learned the first lesson of parenting: You are not in control of what is going to happen, nor can you predict it. This applies to your child’s personality, many of his choices and to some extent his health. It also applies to the growing threat of climate change.The climate crisis is bad and getting worse. Here in Oregon, we’ve endured several severe heat waves and wildfires in recent years. As the impacts compound, it’s clear a lot of people around the world — many of them children — are going to suffer and die.Globally, one in three children is exposed to deadly heat waves, and even more to unclean water. A study estimated wildfire smoke to be 10 times as harmful to children’s developing lungs as typical pollution. Researchers also concluded that nearly every child in the world is at risk from at least one climate-intensified hazard: extreme heat, severe storms and floods, wildfires, food insecurity and insect-borne diseases.If you are someone like me who has children and lies awake terrified for their future, you should not let hopelessness about climate change paralyze you. In fact, I would argue that right now the bravest thing to do — even braver than hoping — is to stop hoping.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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      Harlem House Where Billie Holiday Lived Is Damaged in Fire

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      The jazz legend lived in the five-story building on West 139th Street as a teenager with her mother.A four-alarm fire on Wednesday evening severely damaged a building in Harlem where the jazz legend Billie Holiday once lived.The Fire Department said it received the call at about 9 p.m. and extinguished the fire, which spread through all five floors of the building, shortly before 1 a.m. on Thursday morning. No civilians were injured, though four firefighters sustained minor injuries. The cause of the fire is under investigation.“Due to the structural stability of this building, as it was vacant for many years and the amount of fire, we had to pull our members out of the building and go to an exterior fire attack,” Kevin Woods, the Fire Department’s chief of operations, said in a news conference.A portrait of Billie Holiday at Carnegie Hall in 1946.Heritage Images, via Getty ImagesThe building is owned by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which is responsible for maintaining the quality and affordability of housing, among other duties.“Even before the fire, HPD had been actively working with our partners to plan the complete rehabilitation of this building through our preservation programs, relocating tenants to safer housing as part of that process,” Natasha Kersey, a spokeswoman for the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said in an emailed statement to The Times.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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      Explosion at Fuel Depot Near Florence Kills at Least Two

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      Officials said it would take time to determine the cause of the explosion. At least nine people were injured in the blast.At least two people were killed and another nine injured Monday in an explosion at a fuel depot on the outskirts of Florence, according to city officials and the company that ran the facility. The cause of the explosion had not yet been determined, the company said.The death toll could rise, as three workers at the depot in the town of Calenzano remained unaccounted for, the officials said. The explosion occurred around 10:20 a.m. Television images showed a huge plume of black smoke rising from the site.ENI, the Italian energy company that owns the depot, said in a statement that the explosion had been confined to a loading area and a resulting fire had not spread to nearby tanks.Italy’s minister for civil protection, Nello Musumeci, said on social media that rescue workers were deployed immediately after the explosion. Local hospitals were put on high alert.Teams of firefighters arrived from Florence and surrounding towns, as well as units from nearby airports, and they managed to put out the fire “quickly, given the situation,” said Luca Cari, a spokesman for Italy’s firefighters.Italy’s national civil protection agency issued an SMS text alert to residents within about three miles of the site, advising them to remain indoors and stay clear of the facility.Officials in Calenzano urged citizens to close their windows and limit outdoor activities. Two days of mourning were announced for Monday and Tuesday. All municipal events were canceled for both days.The mayor of Florence, Sara Funaro, described the situation as “very, very bad,” and said in a statement that the city would offer psychological assistance to the families of the victims.“In these moments,” she said, “we must think of the families who are the first to be affected; we have to be close to them.”Luca Tescaroli, the chief prosecutor of the nearby city of Prato, said in a statement that his office would open a case to determine the causes of the explosion and whether anyone should be held accountable, Italian media reported. More

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      Notre-Dame Holds First Public Mass in Years: ‘Fire Has Not Conquered Stone’

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      Sunday was the first opportunity for worshipers to return to the cathedral, beloved by the faithful and secular alike, since the 2019 fire that devastated it.Many Parisians can tell you exactly what they were doing when they heard that Notre-Dame was burning five years ago.Many of them instinctively rushed toward the building, and lined the Seine River to watch in horror as flames devoured the ancient lead roof, sending the 19th-century wooden spire tumbling down, punching holes through the vaults and burning the pews below.Some dropped to their knees and prayed, but the cathedral is not just a sanctuary for the faithful. Nor — its millions of visitors a year notwithstanding — is it just a tourist attraction. Notre-Dame, as the crowds of stricken Parisians testified to on that April 2019 day, is the heart of their city, part of the essential fabric of its identity, and a part of them.Notre-Dame is, however, first and foremost a church, and on Sunday evening, worshipers returned there as its first regular Mass was celebrated below the soaring stone arches — the old ones indistinguishable from the new.Seats for the Mass were in great demand.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times“Five years after its destruction, here it stands again, ready to welcome the prayers of the faithful, to welcome the heart, the cry of the heart of all those who come here from all over the world,” Msgr.Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, rector of the cathedral, declared in his opening remarks. “Fire has not conquered stone, despair has not conquered life.”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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      With Pageantry and Dignitaries, France Unveils a Reborn Notre-Dame

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      Five years after a ruinous fire, the reopening of the cathedral restored it in full glory to the Paris skyline and delivered a much-needed morale boost for France.Five years after a fire that devoured its roof and nearly collapsed its walls, a renovated Notre-Dame Cathedral reopened its doors on Saturday, its centuries-old bell clanging, its 8,000-pipe organ first groaning — and then roaring back to life.It was an emotional rebirth for one of the world’s most recognized monuments, a Gothic medieval masterpiece and cornerstone of European culture and faith.“Brothers and sisters, let us enter now into Notre-Dame,” Laurent Ulrich, the archbishop of Paris, said before poking three times on the cathedral doors with the point of his staff, made with a beam of the roof that survived the fire.As he pushed open the door, the sounds of brass instruments and the melodic voices of dozens of children singing in the cathedral choir filled the nave.The ceremony restored the cathedral to the Parisian skyline in its full glory and delivered a much-needed morale boost for France at a time of political dysfunction, a stagnating economy and a bitter budget standoff that this week resulted in the toppling of the center-right government.With the successful reopening of Notre-Dame, on a schedule that many had derided as too ambitious, France showed off its ability to execute major projects, as it did with the Summer Olympics, and exhibited its artistic and artisanal expertise.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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      Notre-Dame Shines, and World Gets a Sneak Peek, on Macron’s Televised Tour

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      “You’ve achieved what was said to be impossible,” the French president told workers at the Paris monument, which will reopen after the 2019 fire.President Emmanuel Macron of France toured the Paris cathedral five years after it was damaged in a devastating fire. The landmark is expected to reopen to the public next month.Pool photo by Christophe Petit TessonThe world got its first glimpse on Friday of the newly renovated Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.President Emmanuel Macron of France took viewers on a live televised tour of the cathedral’s dazzlingly clean interior and rebuilt roofing, five years after a devastating fire that was followed by a colossal reconstruction effort.“I believe you are seeing the cathedral like it has never been seen before,” Philippe Jost, the head of the reconstruction task force, told Mr. Macron.The French president and his wife, Brigitte, gushed with admiration and craned their necks as they entered the 12th and 13th-century Gothic monument alongside the mayor and archbishop of Paris.More than 450,000 square feet of cream-colored limestone inside the cathedral have been meticulously stripped of ash, lead dust and centuries of accumulated grime, leaving its soaring vaults, thick columns and tall walls almost startlingly bright.Mr. Macron’s visit before the monument is scheduled to reopen next week was an opportunity for him to shift focus away from the country’s political turmoil and budgetary woes. It will put the spotlight on a bet that he made, and that appears to have paid off, to rebuild the cathedral on a tight five-year deadline.“You’ve achieved what was said to be impossible,” Mr. Macron told an assembly of over half of the 2,000 workers and craftsmen from around France — and beyond — who contributed to the cathedral’s reconstruction. 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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      Lahaina Fire Settlement is Caught up in Legal Fight With Insurers

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      Insurers that paid claims in Maui say a deal unfairly keeps them from recouping their own losses.The ashes of last summer’s devastating fire in Lahaina on Maui, which killed 102 people and destroyed the town, were still smoldering when talk turned to how fraught the rebuilding process would be.Fire victims would need help fast, and Hawaii officials pushed hard for a quick resolution to the avalanche of lawsuits filed against the entities that had caused the fire: the state’s electric utility, a school system and Maui County, among others.Just days shy of the fire’s one-year anniversary in August, a settlement was announced: Together, those responsible would pay $4 billion to settle more than 600 lawsuits; compensate over 10,000 homeowners, businesses and others; and — critically — keep key institutions, like the utility, solvent.But getting a deal done that quickly meant adopting an unorthodox approach to the insurance industry’s role in the settlement — one that the industry is challenging. Now, hopes for a timely payout are at the mercy of the courts.Typically, insurers pay claims and then sue whomever they blame for the damage — like the driver who might have caused a car accident — to recover some of what they paid. In the Lahaina settlement, the insurers are instead expected to seek repayment from the people and businesses they insured. A person who received a share of the $4 billion deal from a pain-and-suffering claim, for example, could have to pay a portion of that to the insurance company.The industry is balking at this idea, saying it upends a core piece of its business model. Insurers have turned to state and federal courts to try to block the deal, slowing it down and frustrating fire victims and Hawaii leaders.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