Hours before the wildfire became an inferno that wiped out the historic Hawaiian town of Lahaina, officials at the West Maui Land Company reached out to the state with an urgent request. The company, a real estate developer that supplies water to areas southeast of Lahaina, took note of the dangerous combination of high winds…
Before fire tore through the Hale Mahaolu Eono senior-living complex, trapping a man in his wheelchair and forcing a 95-year-old grandmother to flee through a blizzard of embers, before it killed two close friends and left neighbors missing, people felt lucky to live there. The independent-living complex in Lahaina was one of the few housing…
DNA specialists who have been working with Ukrainian investigators to document suspected Russian war crimes. Veterans of the post-Sept. 11 search at ground zero. Anthropologists who were enlisted to examine human remains after the California wildfire that until last week was America’s deadliest in more than a century. They are among the experts who have…
The pastor Arza Brown had long told the congregants of Grace Baptist Church that if they left the sanctuary and gathered beneath Lahaina’s mango trees, that then their church would be under the mangoes, too. “When we talk about the church,” Mr. Brown said on Sunday, “the building is not the church. The building is…
LAHAINA, Hawaii — The death toll in the firestorm that decimated the Maui town of Lahaina reached 89 on Saturday, the authorities said, making it the deadliest wildfire in the United States in more than a century. The toll seemed likely to rise further in the coming days. Chief John Pelletier of the Maui County…
Two world-renowned virologists appeared on Capitol Hill on Tuesday and delivered a pointed defense of their findings that the coronavirus pandemic was natural in origin, and told skeptical Republicans that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci did not exert influence over a scientific paper they wrote to that effect. The paper is at the heart of Republicans’…
Firefighters in southwestern Washington were working on Tuesday to extinguish a wildfire that has engulfed more than 500 acres since it broke out on Sunday. Local fire crews first responded to reports of a wildfire at 11:19 a.m. Sunday morning near Underwood, a small town in Skamania County near the state’s border with Oregon. Hot,…
Part of Interstate 95 in northeast Philadelphia was shut down in both directions on Sunday morning after a vehicle fire caused part of the highway to collapse, officials said. The fire was under Route I-95 near the Cottman Avenue exit, Sarah Peterson, a spokeswoman for the city of Philadelphia, said in an email. “The fire…
A shelter-in-place order for residents in the Tacoma, Wash., region was lifted on Monday, two days after a fishing vessel caught fire in the Puget Sound area, sending thick smoke into the air and diverting maritime traffic, the authorities said. The vessel, Kodiak Enterprise, caught fire early on Saturday while moored at Trident Seafoods in…
Two other people who were in the home were taken to the hospital. One of them was in critical condition, an official said.