Recovery

A Port Arthur, Texas, City Councilwoman is one of the people whose request for reimbursement was declined by the Land Office because she didn’t raise her home, which is in the floodplain, while completing repairs.

Historically, officials say, it takes about a year to be reimbursed once a qualifying application for assistance is made. But this year, the process hasn't even started for many claims from last October.

Sonoma County residents were only two years removed from the devastating 2017 Tubbs Fire and had become organized since then. This helped firefighters get in to fight the Kincade Fire instead of getting people to safety.

“Resiliency and mitigation is a larger part of this bill than similar bills we’ve taken up,” said Rep. Chuck McGrady, a Hendersonville Republican, who later characterized the effort as a “pivot.”

In Windsor, Healdsburg, Geyserville, Sebastopol and Santa Rosa, 64,000 people were allowed to return to homes that many spent days worrying they might never see again, after Sonoma County authorities lifted mandatory evacuation orders Wednesday afternoon.

Across California, wildfires and outages have forced health-care providers to close hospitals and medical clinics, or greatly limit services. Both Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health evacuated their Santa Rosa hospitals.

Many of the more than 180,000 evacuees are staying with family and friends until they can safely return home. But many others have had to sleep in evacuation centers, their cars and RVs, county fairgrounds, and campgrounds.

This month, PG&E ordered four mass power shutoffs to millions of Californians. Despite the effort, PG&E could be to blame for sparking the Sonoma County Kincade Fire, which has blazed across 75,000 acres as of Tuesday.

The Getty fire broke out along a freeway Monday and blew up to more than 600 acres under Santa Ana winds, destroying eight homes and damaging five in Brentwood. Thousands of people were ordered to evacuate.

As students, parents and administrators across Oklahoma and the U.S. worry about violence on campuses, more districts are also coping with the learning disruptions and psychological damage that comes through fake threats.

Firefighters are battling several major wildfires across California, including the Kincade Fire, an explosive Sonoma County blaze that has engulfed more than 54.000 acres, Cal Fire reported.

The Getty fire broke out shortly before 2 a.m. along the 405 Freeway near the Getty Center and spread to the south and west, rapidly burning 400 acres and sending people fleeing from their homes in the dark.

Just under 1,300 total personnel – and 12 helicopters, 32 bulldozers and more than 75 fire engines - were assigned to the wildfire, which ignited in California. The blaze spread rapidly with help from fierce, erratic winds and reached 10,000 acres before sunrise Thursday.

In the early morning hours, motorists were surrounded by flames after the Tick fire jumped the freeway. Drivers could be seen in bumper-to-bumper traffic as they attempted to navigate the roadway.

PG&E told state regulators Thursday that equipment on a transmission tower broke near the origin point of the fire, near Geyserville in northeastern Sonoma County. PG&E identified an outage on the tower shortly before the fire was reported Wednesday.