California's Caldor Fire triggers fresh evacuations near Lake Tahoe
30 August 2021
California's Caldor Fire triggered fresh evacuation orders for communities in Amador County, near Sacramento, as it neared the Lake Tahoe Basin on Sunday night.
Driving the news: Containment of the blaze dropped to 13% as it grew to over 168,000 acres on Sunday amid extremely dry conditions, as it razed at least four cabins near Echo Summit, the Sacramento Bee notes.
- Cal Fire Division Chief Eric Schwab said firefighters had been "seeing about a half-mile of movement on the fire's perimeter each day" for the past couple of weeks, and on Sunday "this has already moved at 2.5 miles on us, with no sign that it’s starting to slow down," per AP.
Threat level: The National Weather Service issued a Red Flag warning for areas including around Lake Tahoe and the Caldor Fire zone, effective from 11 a.m. Monday to 11 p.m. Tuesday, with strong southwesterly winds and more triple-digit temperatures expected for the region.
The big picture: The Caldor Fire ignited on Aug. 14 in the Omo Ranch area and has been "steadily pushing eastward toward the basin," the Sacramento Bee reports.
Context: Scientists have tied these extreme weather events to climate change.
- A sweeping UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report published earlier this month found that the connection between human emissions of greenhouse gases and global warming is "unequivocal."
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.