Hurricane Helene killing and destroying far and wide – from Tampa to Atlanta to Asheville, North Carolina – its high winds, heavy rains and sheer size made for an ideal mixture of devastation.

The storm made landfall late Thursday along a largely undeveloped area of ​​pine trees and salt marshes on Florida's Big Bend coast, but immediately showed its far-reaching force several hundred miles away. At least 64 people were confirmed dead as of Sunday morning.

Tampa Bay was inundated by an enormous storm surge that sent water as much as people's attics. More than 11 inches of rain fell in Atlanta, greater than any 48-hour period in recorded history. So many trees were toppled in South Carolina that at one point greater than 40 percent of the state lost power. In North Carolina, levees threatened to fail and full communities were paralyzed by flooding. Floods inundated a Tennessee hospital so quickly that greater than 50 patients needed to be rescued from the roof by helicopter.

How could a single storm cause destruction thus far away?

Dan Brown, a specialist on the National Hurricane Center near Miami, said Helene has all of the characteristics that make a storm largely destructive.

It was large and about 560 kilometers wide. It was strong, with winds of 140 mph (225 km/h) when it made landfall late Thursday, causing a widespread storm surge. It brought heavy rains. And it was fast, racing at speeds of as much as 24 miles per hour (39 km/h) offshore and 30 miles per hour (48 km/h) inland.

He compared the geographical extent of Helene's destruction to 1972's Hurricane Agnes, 1989's Hurricane Hugo and 2004's Hurricane Ivan.

“Systems that are very powerful, large and moving quickly unfortunately bring the potential for impacts and damage far inland,” Brown said Saturday.

Here's a have a look at Helene's many deadly tentacles.

FLORIDA

Helene's devastation began Thursday, hours before it made landfall because it swept through the Gulf of Mexico. Its then 120 mile per hour (193 km/h) winds created a storm surge that pushed 6 to fifteen feet (2 to 4.5 meters) of water into island and coastal neighborhoods along Florida's west coast.

Nine individuals who drowned were residents who remained behind after their neighborhoods within the Tampa Bay area were ordered evacuated.

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri expressed his frustration – issuing evacuation orders was not a call taken flippantly, he said. Many who ignored officers then called for help, while some sought refuge from the rising water of their attics. Officials tried to assist with boats and conspicuous vehicles, but were unable to achieve many parts of town.

“We presented our arguments, we told people what they had to do, and they changed their mind,” Gualtieri said at a news conference Friday.

Late Thursday, Helene's eyes fell on Florida's northwest coast within the Big Bend area, where the panhandle juts west out of the peninsula – hurricanes Idalia and Debby had hit the realm within the last 13 months.

Susan Saul's Hartway had evacuated her seaside home – it was gone when she returned on Friday.

“I knew it was going to be bad, but I had no idea it was going to be this bad,” Hartway said. “This is incredible.”

GEORGIA

After landing, Helene raced to Georgia. Among the greater than 20 dead were a 27-year-old mother and her one-month-old twins who died Friday when trees fell on their home in Thomson, west of Augusta. An 89-year-old woman died when trees fell on her nearby home.

Rhonda Bell and her husband spent a sleepless night within the downstairs bedroom of their century-old home just outside Valdosta, where Helene's midpoint was just after midnight.

The wind snapped tree branches, ripped off neighbors' roof shingles and knocked over fence panels within the neighborhood with train tracks on one edge. Then a towering oak tree crashed through the roof of an upstairs bedroom.

“I just felt the whole house shaking,” Bell said. “Thank God we’re both still alive and can tell about it.”

Atlanta was hit by 11 inches (28 centimeters) of rain, the heaviest 48-hour rainfall because the city began keeping records in 1878. Streets were flooded and cars were submerged. Firefighters rescued at the least 20 people.

NORTH CAROLINA

Heavy rains from Helene within the state's western mountains resulted in massive flooding and mudslides Asheville area, This disrupted most communications and made the roads impassable.

Video published online shows large parts of town under water.

More than 1,000 miles (1,610 kilometers) away in Texas, Jessica Drye Turner pleaded on Facebook Friday for somebody to rescue her members of the family stranded on the roof of their Asheville home.

But in a follow-up message Saturday, Turner said the roof collapsed before help arrived and her parents, each of their 70s, and her 6-year-old nephew drowned.

“I cannot express in words the sadness, heartache and devastation my sisters and I are going through,” she wrote.

Jeff Muenstermann and his wife Lisa, friends of Turner, told The Associated Press on Saturday that they spoke with Turner after she posted the initial call for help. At her request, they sent a message to members of the Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas, where they’re all present, to wish for the family's safety in North Carolina.

“I just thought they were going to be saved,” Jeff Muenstermann said. “I asked everyone to pray and they did. And then a few hours later her husband called me, completely distraught, and said…we lost her. They all drowned.”

SOUTH CAROLINA

The storm was particularly deadly in South Carolina. The biggest impact appears to be falling trees. The storm also caused tornadoes within the state.

In Saluda County, two firefighters were killed when a tree fell on their truck while they were answering a call. Four people were killed by falling trees in Greenville County. Also in Aiken County, 4 people were killed by trees falling on homes, including a 78-year-old husband and his 74-year-old wife.

TENNESSEE

Heavy rains in Helene caused the state's eastern rivers to overflow their banks and threaten to breach dams, endangering residents and forcing them to flee.

Unicoi County Hospital tried to evacuate 11 patients and dozens more, however the water was too treacherous for Tennessee Emergency Management Agency boats to navigate.

Helicopters were flown in to rescue. Eventually everyone was evacuated.

Originally published: September 29, 2024 at 7:31 am

There is not any longer any parking available for visitors who need to stop and take a selfie on the Bixby Bridge.

Since last Friday, a brand new parking ban has been in effect on Coast Road on the Bixby Bridge along Highway 1 and can remain in effect until further notice, Monterey County announced.

Visitors are only allowed to stop at designated areas along the panoramic road.

The parking ban is meant to enhance traffic safety and was implemented in coordination with Caltrans and the California Highway Patrol.

“An increasing number of visitors and motorists are parking along the highway and on side roads, creating hazards,” said Nicholas Pasculli, director of the county's communications office, in a news release. “With the Rocky Creek repair and signal system project, this has become an even greater problem.”

A piece of Highway 1 north of the Bixby Bridge collapsed into the ocean during a rainstorm last spring. Since then, traffic restrictions have been in place for repairs.

Once the parking ban goes into effect, California Highway Patrol officers will notify motorists and ask those that park illegally to maneuver. Cars that don’t move will probably be ticketed and will be towed.

Originally published: September 16, 2024 at 6:52 am

Kansas faces the largest teacher shortage in its history. The Florida: 4,000 unfilled teaching positions With the beginning of the brand new school 12 months, “there is more than the number of teachers in 19 of Florida's smallest districts combined,” says the state's teachers' union. In Vermont, there are days when entire classes of scholars are sent home because no teacher or substitute is out there.

The teaching career is facing a morale and staffing crisis. A survey of its members by the National Education Association found that by the tip of 2022, an astonishing 55% of educators desirous about quitting.

This is a legacy of COVID-19. Teachers were already dissatisfied before the pandemic, but the general public's response to the education their children received during this crisis continues to haunt the career. A Brown University study found that teachers' job satisfaction in 2022 fluctuated near its lowest level for the reason that Seventies.

As a Researcher specializing in education policyalong with my colleague Sara Dahill-Brownwe spent the pandemic exploring how teachers were feeling as events unfolded. Between 2020 and 2022, we conducted 164 interviews with a complete of 53 leaders of teachers unions and associations from 45 school districts in 14 states. They represented urban, suburban, and rural districts and a variety of partisan leanings.

The results, published in our latest study on teaching and teacher trainingshow how damaging the pandemic has been for K-12 teachers. Thousands leave the career.

COVID-19 response undermines teachers’ sense of security

Many teachers were already concerned about safety because of college shootings. With COVID-19, these Fears increased by public demands for a rapid return to in-person learning before health authorities deemed it protected to accomplish that and before money was invested to implement best practices.

In the summer of 2020, most senior teachers told us they were “terrified” and “scared to death” because “there were no set criteria or expectations. … It was a case of just jumping in at the deep end and doing your best.”

Vaccines and other scientific developments have alleviated this particular fear, but as recently as April 2023, nearly 4 in 10 teachers told researchers they considered on the lookout for one other job because they didn’t feel protected at work.

An intense and relentless workload

Throughout the 2020-21 school 12 months, parents balanced their work with sitting – or running and screaming – children at her side for “Zoom School.” Thanks to hybrid models, with some students taught in person and others via videoconference, teachers now needed to tackle a dual role.

One respondent stated that they were “expected to not only teach students in person, but also provide them with a meaningful learning experience at home.” Another respondent shared that “teachers worked many, many, many more hours than they ever would have in an in-person setting,” namely “12 to 16 hours a day and on weekends” and provided feedback “until 10 p.m. at night.”

The result was an exhaustion that one principal described as “June fatigue in October.” And that was just an unusual increase of their already intense workload; teachers in non-pandemic times are frequently work a mean of 53 hours per weekThat’s seven hours greater than the common working adult.

Poor leadership and changing expectations

The pandemic also exacerbated simmering dissatisfaction with school and district leadership. Teachers felt misled, ill-informed and unaccounted for. They were rarely asked for input and pressured into radical changes in education, respondents told us.

Teachers wanted “consistency,” “clear answers,” and no more “thinking on the fly,” they told us. Plans modified so incessantly that one said “an email written on Monday” was “out of date on Wednesday.” Another said administrators were saying “the right things publicly” to “signal compassion and care for teachers. But the actions are different. And that's taking a toll on teachers.”

One union leader told us: “If you read the comments from parents on social media, you find a lot more of: 'Just shut up and go back to school. You're lazy. You're not doing your job.'”

Another echoed this: “Historically, the teaching profession has always been little respected. But today it is much, much worse. Not only are they not respected, they are demonized.”

Jobs and budget cuts raise latest fears

The majority (68%) of study participants were already concerned about budgets or job security initially of the pandemic. Forty percent feared that COVID-19-related enrollment losses would exacerbate these concerns. And many feared that “schools don’t have the budget to implement all the safety measures that science says are necessary.”

All this remained in place even when Congress in April 2020 greater than 13 billion US dollars provided for K-12 emergency aid. By the tip of 2020, then-President Donald Trump promised Another $50 billion to support school reopening.

While these funds prevented catastrophic cuts, researchers and policymakers warned of a budget cliff that awaits districts in the event that they didn’t prepare for the moment when this money tap would dry up. And indeed, there at the moment are quite a few examples of exactly this reality, comparable to the mass layoffs in St. Paul, Minnesota, Houston And Ann Arbor, Michiganamongst others.

The worst of the pandemic is behind us, and resources are being cut despite the continued need. This recipe – burned-out teachers quitting and a few who desired to stay being laid off – is shaking up your complete industry.

Opportunities to spice up morale

There are several ways to extend morale, but most require more, not less, investment.

Teachers demand higher pay – with a minimum starting salary of $60,000 per 12 months – together with stability in health and pension advantages. The National Education Association says the The average starting salary is currently $44,530The NEA also advocates higher conditions for the teaching assistants who support them within the classroom. And teachers want more say in what they teach.

Without these changes, we imagine school systems is not going to have the opportunity to stop the exodus of educators from the career – and schools will proceed to lose their best and brightest minds consequently.

An Orange County fertility clinic by chance destroyed embryos after they got here into contact with hydrogen peroxide while an worker was cleansing an incubator, in line with two lawsuits filed Thursday, April 18, by two couples.

The couples, who didn’t conceive after implanting the embryos in late January, are accusing FPG Labs, LLC – doing business as Ovation Fertility – of negligent representation, negligence, fraud, intentional misrepresentation and five other claims. The plaintiffs are identified within the lawsuits only by their initials. No damages amounts were mentioned.

Ovation Fertility operates 14 laboratories in 10 states, including one in Newport Beach where an worker “erroneously used hydrogen peroxide instead of a sterile solution in an incubator,” Adam Wolf, the couple's attorney, said in a news conference Thursday, calling the situation an “avoidable tragedy.” “.

The lawsuits allege that Ovation Fertility knew it had hired employees who were unsuitable, improperly trained, or unable to watch or use the embryo incubator.

The lawsuits say the couples “may no longer be able to have biologically related children due to defendants' conduct.”

In one lawsuit, a lady underwent two egg retrievals in October and November 2016, while within the second lawsuit, the lady underwent egg retrieval in April 2023, the lawsuits say.

Ovation Fertility didn’t reply to a request for comment. It was not known Thursday whether an attorney represented the clinic.

Of the 20 network labs listed on Ovation's website, the Newport Beach clinic is the just one in California.

The clinic describes itself as one in all the five largest in vitro fertilization providers within the United States and says it operates a “first-class laboratory” that uses “best practices” and operates to the “highest standards,” in line with plaintiffs' lawyers The allegations made within the lawsuits are false.