California wildfire death toll: 2 firefighters, great-grandmother, 2 children

REDDING, California — Two young children and their 70-year-old great-grandmother died in the wildfire that swept into the city of Redding with devastating speed, their family said Saturday, and a bulldozer operator who died working to contain the fire was identified as an 81-year-old man from a small community east of Sacramento.

A tearful Sherry Bledsoe confirmed the deaths of her grandmother, Melody Bledsoe, and her children, James Roberts, 5, and Emily Roberts, 4.

The fatalities brought the death toll to five since the so-called Carr Fire started burning Monday. It exploded Thursday, jumped the Sacramento River and entered the Redding city limits.


The Shasta County Sheriff’s Department identified the bulldozer operator as Don Ray Smith of Pollock Pines. He was overtaken by flames while on the job and his body was found Thursday.

Authorities previously identified another firefighter fatality as Redding Fire Department Inspector Jeremy Stoke, who was killed on the job Thursday night. Details have not been released.

Donna Araiza, founder of the Alyssa Araiza “Wings of Angels” organization for seriously ill children, said Stoke regularly donated to her group, as well as the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

“He and his wife, Alyson, were always supporting us,” Araiza told the Record Searchlight, Redding’s daily newspaper. “He was a generous and a good man.”

The Bledsoes lived near the Keswick Estates neighborhood, and their home, like many around it, was reduced to ashes. The tragedy leaves Ed Bledsoe without his wife and the great-grandchildren he doted on.

“He lost everything. Everything. You can’t lose more than family. And then you lose everything on top of that?” said Don Kewley, whose girlfriend is one of the Bledsoes’ granddaughters. “The man’s got the shirt on his back and the pants on his waist. Like that’s it.”

Ed Bledsoe had headed out for supplies Thursday thinking the flames were far away, but while shopping he received a desperate call from his great-grandson. The boy said he had to come back to the home. Flames were closing in.

“We need your help,” the boy said, according to Jason Decker, who is the boyfriend of another Bledsoe granddaughter.


Kewley said the family believed the area was not in imminent danger and Melody Bledsoe had no car.

Ed Bledsoe rushed home, but was turned back by police. The fire was raging and there were walls of flames.

Decker took the day off work Friday and drove his motorcycle to the home to look for members of the family but only found the smoldering remains of the house.

A day later, what remained of the Bledsoe property was surrounded with crime scene tape.

Decker said his own children played with James and Emily and they had trick-or-treated together.

“I don’t even have any more tears to cry,” Decker said. “But I keep finding them.”   /kga

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Hope fading for survivors as Mexico search enters third day

Mexico City, Mexico —Mexico waited anxiously on Thursday for signs of life in the rubble of collapsed buildings as a desperate search for survivors of a devastating earthquake entered a third day.

Authorities put the death toll following Tuesday’s 7.1 magnitude quake at more than 250 people, with the number expected to rise.

Rescue workers scrabbled to remove tons of rubble at dozens of flattened buildings in the capital and across several central states.

But time is running out. Experts say the average survival time in such conditions and depending on injuries is 72 hours.

Authorities put the overall death toll at 272 — 137 in Mexico City, 73 in Morelos state, 43 in Puebla, 13 in Mexico state, five in Guerrero and one in Oaxaca.

However, the situation on the ground was chaotic, and the figures were rising — and sometimes falling.

Phantom schoolgirl

Highlighting the confusion that still reigned two days after the quake, one story that gripped the world’s attention turned out to be false: that of a girl supposedly trapped alive beneath the rubble of a school that collapsed in Mexico City.

Authorities denied Thursday that the girl existed.

“We have carried out a full count with the directors of the school and we are sure that all the children are either safe at home, in the hospital or unfortunately died,” Angel Enrique Sarmiento, a top officer in the Mexican marines, told journalists at the ruins of the Enrique Rebsamen school on the capital’s south side.

“There are indications there may be an (adult) still alive in the rubble. There are traces of blood, photographs, as if the person had dragged him or herself and may still be alive,” he added.

Rescue workers had told journalists they were certain a girl was alive beneath the rubble, but the different versions of the story varied widely.

The story had made headlines around the world after the quake, injecting a ray of hope into a tragedy that killed 19 children and six adults at the school.

‘I need volunteers here’

But real stories of hope continued to emerge from ruined buildings across the city, where more than 10,000 people lost their lives in a devastating earthquake in 1985.

In the north of the city, a man who had been trapped for 26 hours and a 90-year-old woman were pulled alive from the rubble.

Residents of San Gregorio in the tourist-magnet Xochimilco neighborhood in Mexico City’s far south were angry at the lack of material aid and volunteers.

“I need volunteers! Yesterday everything arrived and now there is nobody. They come, they do some disaster tourism, and they leave,” one volunteer who gave his name as Morales told AFP.

San Gregorio was badly hit by the quake with many collapsed buildings and others in a state of near-collapse.

Rescue teams were helped by thousands of ordinary civilians who dug through the rubble alongside them. Other Mexicans took to the streets with food and water for victims and emergency workers.

International solidarity

President Enrique Pena Nieto toured the hardest-hit areas and declared three days of national mourning.

“The priority remains saving lives,” he said Wednesday night in a broadcast to a grieving nation, insisting there was still hope of finding survivors.

More than 50 people have been rescued from collapsed buildings in the capital, he said.

US President Donald Trump called Pena Nieto and offered assistance and search-and-rescue teams which were quickly being deployed, the White House said.

Rescue teams have flown in from Israel, El Salvador and Panama and more were expected from Ecuador, Honduras, Colombia and Spain.

Rescuers said the Israeli teams came with equipment enabling them to detect cell phone signals within the rubble.

The earthquake hit on the anniversary of a huge quake in 1985 that killed more than 10,000 people, the disaster-prone country’s deadliest ever.

Tuesday’s temblor struck just two hours after Mexico held a national earthquake drill, as it does every September 19 to remember the 1985 disaster.

A system of quake sensors was set up in 1993 along the Pacific coast, where tremors are more common.

People in Mexico City were not warned by it on Tuesday because the epicenter was only 120 kilometers (75 miles) outside the capital and thus outside the main area of sensor coverage, said Carlos Valdes of the National Center for Disaster Prevention.

Adding to the national sense of vulnerability, the earthquake struck just 12 days after another quake that killed nearly 100 people in southern Mexico.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

At least 40 migrants die in Mediterranean – Italian navy

ROME - At least 40 migrants have died in the hold of a boat in the Mediterranean, probably from suffocation, the Italian news agency ANSA reported on Saturday.

The Italian navy confirmed the deaths but gave no other details. It said the naval vessel Cigala Fulgosi was leading the rescue mission and had saved many other people.

ANSA said the boat was 21 miles off the coast of Libya and carrying about 400 migrants. — Reuters

Remembering 9/11 with reflection, respect

Once again, the threshold of 9/11 is on us.

That date is such a grim reminder of what took place on September 11, a dozen years ago. More than 3,000 lives were lost that day. That date changed the world forever.

Terrorism was defined in the cruelest and the most inhumane way when it came to what attained worldwide notoriety as ‘9/11.’

How air travel since then has been direly affected is an everyday reminder: when passengers traveling by air are required by law to follow whatever measures must be observed join the daily scenes at airports.

On many an occasion, this writer is not the only one who hears how ‘inconvenient’ it is to fly; remembering the many inconveniences whose origins go back to that date when terrorism didn’t just rock New York City, but the rest of the world. After-shocks tell volumes where blackened-out areas still stand out.

Inevitably, the subject of 9/11 arises when friends and kin talk about what happened, told and retold to them by scenes on TV, not only on that day but each time air carriers accompanied the news.

Just to recall the scenes, how commercial airlines were flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon seemed far from real; the viewer would not err when she/he would think what she saw was on reel, a story on science. But those spectra did happen. They were real. Not reel.

The attack on the Pentagon caused the death of 184 people. Forty were killed on United Air Lines (UAL) Flight 93 in Pennsylvania when determined and dauntless passengers were able to prevent another building in Washington to be struck by their own plane piloted by terrorist hijackers.

Had those passengers failed in their plan of attack on the cockpit where terrorists had taken over flight control, who knows whether or not the Capitol or even the White House could have been spared.

It was still breakfast on the West Coast then. The phone rang incessantly. It was Jason, our grandson, a plebe at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland (class 2005) who was on the line. He assured us “all was well,” and not to worry about him. That was the ‘alert’ he gave. Then, he was off the line in just moments. No time for queries nor comments came from us, his family.

Later, we put two and two together. Their grounds, close to the Pentagon were identified by news reports as ‘that close’ to the terrorists’ target when that UAL flight came down.

One question that ensued that day and has morphed into more queries many a time thereafter: “Where were you when 9/11 took place?” That query almost parallels one such question: “Where were you when President Kennedy was assassinated?”

What everyone was doing then doesn’t necessitate slow recollection. Numbers among us can recall what was going on in our lives when 9/11/2001 descended in untold destruction, not only in terms of lives and property, but the inner spirit as well.

A new definition of terrorism emerged.

Panic-stricken scenes ensued. There were pathetically narrated losses seen and heard. Of lives. Of morale. Of sole wage earners. Of budding careerists in their respective fields. Of brave men and women. Of public servants. Of medical teams rushing to save lives. Of how 9/11 became a tragedy of immeasurable proportions. Of nameless and unidentified heroes. Of attempts to scamper to safety from sky-high edifices whose facilities ceased working. Indeed, so many scenes unfolded that did appear over a long period of time on tape.

Remembering 9/11/2011 is today’s reality.

Oftentimes, the term ‘remembering’ takes on an affectionate connotation.

Returning to ‘9/11’ is replete in sadness as it comes to the fore. Yes, it is ‘remembering,’ to a boundless extent. Threats of terrorism cannot be shunted aside.

If only to recall the lessons learned, 9/11/2011 is one date to be together in quiet. Not in any form of celebration. Just respect. Just a few moments of remembrance meant to defer to those who unselfishly gave up their lives so more lives could be spared. — The FilAm

source: gmanetwork.com