A power company in Colorado announced on Saturday that it was cutting power to roughly 55,000 customers over wildfire concerns as powerful winds, some as high as 100 miles per hour, battered the state. The company, Xcel Energy, said in a statement that it “made the decision to proactively de-energize lines,” which would affect customers…
A vast and growing wildfire, one of several burning in the Texas Panhandle, has now become the largest on record in state history, scorching more than a million acres, devastating cattle ranches, consuming homes and continuing to rage out of control. The sparsely populated area is home to most of the state’s cattle — millions…
The second-largest wildfire on record in Texas raged across 850,000 acres on Wednesday, as firefighters from around the state tried to contain it. The blaze has consumed houses, burned vast ranch lands, killed livestock and forced evacuations across the sparsely populated Texas Panhandle. The blaze, known as the Smokehouse Creek fire, ignited on Monday and…
To the outside world there has been no more vivid symbol of the storied history of Lahaina, and its potential for rebirth, than a 150-year-old banyan tree in the center of town whose scarred branches are now, two months after a devastating wildfire, sprouting new, green leaves. The tree’s image adorns “Lahaina Strong” logos on…
Smoke from wildfires in Canada is expected to drift over New York and other Northeastern states on Monday, officials have warned, adding that they were anticipating slight impacts on air quality in some places. Forecasters were expecting plumes of wildfire smoke to reach New York City around sunrise on Monday and leave a visible haze,…
Thick smoke blanketed much of the Pacific Northwest on Monday as numerous wildfires in Canada, Washington and Oregon continued to burn, killing at least one person, destroying scores of buildings and threatening dozens more. At least six large fires were burning in Washington State, including the Gray Fire, which was discovered around noon on Friday…
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has deployed teams, including search dogs, to Maui and Oahu to help local officials with search-and-rescue missions, emergency communications, logistics and coordination. In an operations update on Friday, FEMA, the U.S. government’s arm for disaster preparation, response, relief and recovery, said it planned to distribute five days’ worth of meals,…
A summer of ferocious weather across much of the United States reached the country’s most remote state on Wednesday, 2,500 miles off the West Coast, in Hawaii. What began at the start of the week as scattered brush fires on the state’s biggest islands, Hawaii and Maui, turned deadly by midweek. By Thursday, at least…
The wildfires on Maui, which have been linked to dozens of deaths and burned much of the historic district of the town of Lahaina, may also have long-term impacts on the tourism industry that plays an outsize role in the island’s economy. Local officials have asked visitors making nonessential trips to Maui to leave, and…
This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times. Beginning in the 1940s, the pilot Mary Barr took almost any opportunity to get herself off the ground. She worked as a mechanic, gave flying lessons and even transported prisoners. She ultimately…