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Capital Gazette shooter was obsessed, sister says

When Jarrod Ramoss younger sister took the stand this week to testify in his sanity trial, she said it was the first time she had seen her brother in person in seven years.

Of their immediate family, Michelle Jeans said Ramos had kept in touch with her the longest, sharing updates on his poker-playing hobby, sending postcards from his nine-month hike on the Appalachian Trail and sometimes joining her at concerts or movies. But Jeans said Ramos also sent her emails about the harassment charges he faced from a high school classmate. And he ranted for hours by phone, Jeans testified, about his fixation with the legal fight against the woman’s supporters, including the author of a column in the Capital newspaper.

That behavior concerned her, she said, but she handled her criticism cautiously.

“When people upset him, he will disown them or remove them from his life,” Jeans said. “I didn’t want to upset him.”

But sometime in the mid-2010s, he cut her off, too – just as he’d done to their mother, father and grandfather. Then on June 28, 2018, she saw the news: A mass shooting at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md.

Jeans’s testimony this week, which spanned two days, focused on her recollection of her brother’s life and behaviors leading up to the day he walked into that Annapolis newsroom with a shotgun and killed five people. A defense expert witness – neurologist Thomas Hyde – later tied together Jeans’s observations and his own clinical assessment to explain how he diagnosed Ramos with autism and how that impacted his behavior.

Together, their testimonies painted the picture of a man who never had close friendships or romantic relationships, who preferred to be alone from a young age and who harbored delusions about people he perceived as out to get him.

On cross examination, prosecutors questioned the integrity of Jeans’s testimony and the validity of Hyde’s analysis, which was based on three hours of interviews with Ramos and a one-hour interview with his sister.

Prosecutors insinuated, because of Ramos’ card-playing hobby, that he was putting on a “poker face.”

Though Ramos, 41, has already pleaded guilty to 23 counts in the mass shooting, a jury will now determine whether he is criminally responsible for the attack – or whether, because of a mental disorder, he lacked the ability to understand the criminality of his behavior or conform it to the requirements of the law at the time of the shooting.

His sanity trial began Tuesday and is scheduled to continue through mid-July.

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During her testimony, Jeans described a fairly normal childhood in Maryland that was punctuated by a few formative years living on a military base in England, their parents’ separation and the family’s eventual estrangement from her brother, who she said became reclusive and obsessive in the years after the harassment case.

Ramos told his sister all about it, she said, explaining that he had emailed and exchanged Facebook messages with a woman he attended high school with but did not know. When she stopped responding to him after growing uncomfortable, Jeans testified, he messaged her abusive language, took screenshots of Facebook posts that included her and alcohol, and sent them to her boss – with the intent of getting her fired.

The woman eventually reported his behavior to authorities, and he pleaded guilty to harassment.

Then in 2011, a journalist at the Capital wrote a column titled: “Jarrod wants to be your friend.”

The column said that Ramos’s messages to the woman included “‘[expletive] you, leave me alone’ though she hadn’t written him in months.”

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That, Jeans said, was her brother’s breaking point. He insisted he never said that, and became fixated, she said, on the idea that this factual inaccuracy made him sound “crazy.”

This began his years-long court battle against the journalist who wrote the column, the Capital Gazette news organization and the Maryland judiciary.

He exhausted his appeals options and created burner Twitter accounts to share information about the litigation claiming he had been defamed.

By then, the only family member he was communicating with was Jeans, she said. But most of their conversations were consumed by his court battle.

“That was just his life,” she told the jury. “One hundred percent of the time was the court stuff.”

Before he stopped speaking to her, too, Jeans said she tried to have conversations with her brother about the harassing behavior.

On the stand, Jeans said life always seemed harder for her brother and got emotional speaking about how she wanted to help him.

But during cross-examination, prosecutors homed in on the interview Jeans did with police the day of the shooting in 2018, when she called authorities to say she believed her brother was the shooter. She told police about his tweets.

“He would post stuff that made him look like a psycho,” she said. “. . . And he would say, that’s what I want them to feel, for this lawsuit, I want them to think that I’m crazy.”

Jeans also said she tried to talk to her brother about his physical appearance in court – where he acted as his own attorney but dressed in hiking pants, hiking boots and outdoor button-up shirts.

Jeans testified that she offered to buy him a suit, but he turned her down, saying his wardrobe was a reflection of who he was and that if he dressed up, any jury would know it wasn’t authentic.

When he took to the stand Friday afternoon, Hyde – one of the defense’s expert witnesses and the chief medical officer at Lieber Institute for Brain Development – listed some of the same information Jeans testified to as supporting evidence for the autism diagnosis he gave Ramos.

The man, Hyde said, exhibited little “social emotional reciprocity,” that he had fixations throughout his life and that he wore the same outfit to grade school every day, no matter the weather – all patterns of behavior in people with autism.

But Ramos’s case, Hyde said, is “mild to moderate” and “clearly not severe.”

The trial will resume next week, where the defense will continue to present its case before Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney, Anne Colt Leitess, calls her own expert witnesses. She is expected to argue that, at the time of the shooting, Ramos was not impaired to the point that he could not distinguish right from wrong.

Published : July 03, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Katie Mettler, Emily Davies

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John Potter, first director of Georgetowns Lombardi Cancer Center, dies at 95

John Potter, a surgical oncologist and longtime medical school professor who was the founding director of the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, died June 29 at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, where he worked and taught for decades. He was 95.

The cause was pneumonitis, said his daughter Tanya Potter Adler.

Dr. Potter began his medical studies at Georgetown shortly after World War II and, except for brief periods, was associated with the university for more than 60 years.

In 1970, he became the first director of Georgetown’s cancer center, which was later named for football coach Vince Lombardi, who died that year of colorectal cancer. Potter was among the physicians treating Lombardi at Georgetown University Hospital.

“In my day, cancer was treated in a multi-factoral way,” Potter said in a 2018 video about the Lombardi Center, “and I wanted to get a center established that would meld all of these disciplines into one united whole.”

It became the country’s 16th Comprehensive Cancer Center, a designation by the National Cancer Institute denoting a facility that is a leader in cancer research as well as treatment. It is the only such center in the immediate Washington region.

“There can be no question that without John Potter, there would be no Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center,” current director Louis Weiner said in an online appreciation.

Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia said in 2018 that Potter “represents the very best of this university.”

Potter directed the Lombardi Center for almost 20 years while also maintaining a surgical practice, conducting research and leading the surgical oncology division at Georgetown’s School of Medicine.

He was a proponent of providing psychological support for cancer patients and in the 1970s helped develop a facility with a homelike atmosphere where patients could have favorite meals and visits from relatives. The Lombardi Center also initiated one of the country’s first “life counseling” programs for children with cancer.

Potter was author of more than 60 studies in medical journals and in 1988 published a book for the general public, “How to Improve Your Odds Against Cancer,” outlining ways to protect against and cope with cancer.

John Francis Potter was born July 26, 1925, in New York City and grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y. His father worked for the company that made Crayola crayons; his mother was a homemaker.

Potter graduated from Regis High School, a selective Catholic boys’ school in Manhattan, and attended Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass. He served as a Navy corpsman during World War II.

After graduating from Holy Cross, he entered medical school at Georgetown. He graduated in 1949 and won an award for his research thesis. He was recalled to active duty during the Korean War, then spent much of the 1950s as a resident at Georgetown and as a researcher at the National Cancer Institute. He became a full-time professor at Georgtown’s medical school in 1960.

Potter taught at Georgetown well into the 1990s and had an advisory role with the medical school until 2015. He performed more than 10,000 surgeries while serving on the staff of the university’s medical center.

He also helped launch the U.S. Military Cancer Institute, which was later merged into the John P. Murtha Cancer Center at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. He was president and board chairman of the Association of American Cancer Institutes and served on the board of regents of the Defense Department’s Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. He was a longtime resident of Potomac, Md.

Survivors include his wife of 66 years, the former Tanya Kristof of Potomac; three children, Tanya Potter Adler of Potomac, Muffie Potter Aston of New York and John Potter of Belvedere, Calif.; and four grandchildren.

Potter said his aim at the Lombardi Center was to provide not just the finest cancer treatments but also to address the general well-being of patients.

“When you’re caring for cancer patients,” he said in 2018, “you have a daily reminder that there’s an awful lot more that has to be done, and that must be done, to save lives and to prolong lives.”

Published : July 03, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Matt Schudel

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Widespread ransomware attack could affect hundreds of businesses

A supply-chain ransomware attack that hit hours before the beginning of a holiday weekend has already affected more than 200 businesses, researchers said.

On Friday, information technology company Kaseya sent out a warning of a “potential attack” on its VSA tool, which is used by IT to manage and monitor computers remotely. Kaseya urged customers to shut down their servers running the service.

“Its critical that you do this immediately, because one of the first things the attacker does is shutoff administrative access to the VSA,” the company said.

It was unclear late Friday how disruptive the attack might be on U.S. businesses. More than 40,000 organizations use Kaseya products, the company says, which includes VSA and other IT tools.

Researchers said cybercriminals were sending two different ransom notes on Friday – demanding $50,000 from smaller companies and $5 million from larger ones.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency urged companies in a statement to follow Kaseya’s advice and said it is “taking action to understand and address the recent supply-chain ransomware attack.”

Huntress Labs, a cybersecurity software company which has clients that were affected by the attack, said they believe hacking group REvil is behind the ransomware attack. That’s the same group that the FBI said was responsible for the attack on JBS Meats, which resulted in the company paying REvil $11 million in ransom.

Huntress Labs said they had found eight Managed Service Providers – companies that provide IT services to other companies on a contractual basis – that had been hit by the attack. Around 200 businesses that are served by these MSPs have been locked out of parts of their network, Huntress Labs said.

“It is absolutely the biggest non-nation state supply-chain cyberattack that we’ve ever seen,” Allan Liska, a researcher with cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, said Friday. “And it’s probably the biggest ransomware attack we’ve seen, at least the biggest since WannaCry.”

He noted it could be the largest number of companies one ransomware attack has hit. The companies affected could be a wide range of small to large firms, and many are likely to be small to midsized businesses that use managed IT services. Kaseya also counts a number of state and local governments as customers, Liska said.

The WannaCry computer worm affected hundreds of thousands of people in 2017. The National Security Agency eventually linked the North Korean government to the creation of the worm.

Ransomware attacks increased significantly in frequency and severity during 2020. A report from a task force of more than 60 experts said nearly 2,400 governments, health-care systems and schools in the country were hit by ransomware in 2020. Organizations paid attackers more than $412 million in ransom payments last year, according to analysis firm Chainalysis.

After a May attack on Colonial Pipeline – which spurred panicked lines at gas pumps and empty fuel stations – the U.S. government increased its emphasis on addressing cybersecurity issues, and urged corporate America to strengthen its computer security.

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Ransomware attacks have been on the rise as hackers band together and form cybercriminal gangs to extort companies for payment. The attacks are often carried out by attackers in Russia and Eastern Europe.

Hackers gain access to a company’s computer system using tactics such as sending “phishing” emails, which are designed to trick employees into inadvertently installing malware on their computers.

Once inside, cybercriminals will lock down parts of the companies’ networks, and demand payment to release them back to the owner. Hackers often also steal private company information and threaten to leak it online if they are not paid.

It is still unclear exactly how attackers gained access to Kaseya’s system. The company has been a popular target of REvil, Liska said, likely because it serves so many other organizations as customers.

The attackers included a ransom note directing victims to a website to pay a ransom, though Liska said the site had been down all afternoon and evening.

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Kaseya spokesperson Dana Liedholm said its investigation of the incident is ongoing, and pointed to the company’s earlier statement.

The late Friday attack is unlikely to be a coincidence – such big attacks take planning and preparation, Liska said.

“The timing of this is definitely around knowing that it’s the Fourth of July weekend,” he said.

Published : July 03, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Rachel Lerman, Gerrit De Vynck

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Condominium near Surfside collapse deemed unsafe, under evacuation orders

NORTH MIAMI BEACH – The city of North Miami Beach ordered immediate evacuations for a condominium building north of the Surfside collapse on Friday evening, after officials said the structure was deemed “structurally and electrically unsafe” amid an urgent citywide review.

“It’s just the right thing to do during these times,” City Manager Arthur Sorey III told reporters as people exited the building about a 20 minute drive from the ruined Champlain Towers South, where rescuers have spent a week searching for victims and survivors. Local authorities have scrambled to check other buildings after the condo’s sudden collapse, which left at least 22 dead and 126 missing.

Crestview Towers – a 10-story, 156-unit building built in 1972 – is the first tower to raise alarms after the deadly Surfside collapse led North Miami Beach to launch a review of all condo buildings over five stories, checking their safety and compliance with the local 40-year recertification process. As the sun fell, residents from the building were still trickling out, pulling luggage, stuffing pillows and bicycles into their car trunks as Floridians prepared for Hurricane Elsa to potentially come their way.

“Upstairs, the neighbors are crying,” said Karina Sobrino, 45, who owns two units in the condo building and helped her 70-year-old mother evacuate. “Because a lot of them don’t have families. Don’t have a place to stay.”

Officials said the building was closed out of “an abundance of caution” while a full assessment is conducted. Crestview Towers should have been in the recertification process, Sorey said, but “hadn’t complied” and submitted the problematic report dated Jan. 11 to the city on Friday afternoon.

“A lot of residents are upset. But everyone does understand why we have to do this,” Sorey said. “In light of the hurricane headed our way, at least we know people are going to be safe,” Sorey added.

Mariel Tollinchi, an attorney representing the condo association, said the group is not convinced that the report deeming the building unsafe is accurate and has requested a second review.

The board, made up a group of residents, thought the January report was submitted to the city by the engineer who wrote it and didn’t find out the building was not in compliance with the recertification process until the audit following the Surfside condo collapse, Tollinchi said.

She said they have been making repairs for the past two years, and the recommended fixes would cost about $10 million, which they view as unreasonably high.

“There’s just no way a homeowner is going to cough up $100,000 to make repairs to their home while they’re not even living in their home and having to incur the expenses of living outside,” Tollinchi said.

The city of North Miami Beach started an audit of all buildings on June 29, Sorey told The Washington Post. City employees found that Crestview Towers had failed to get both its 40-year and 50-year recertification, and requested that the condo association submit a safety report within 30 days.

At 2 p.m., Sorey said, the city received an engineer’s report, dated January 2021, that indicated the building was not safe to be occupied. By 5 p.m., he added, police officers were on-site, knocking on doors.

The city is working with Red Cross and a local homelessness organization to house those unable to find other shelter; nobody will be allowed to reside in the building until it is deemed safe, he said.

Sorey told reporters he is not yet sure how many live in the condo, located at 2025 NE 164th St. Authorities are hoping to get people out in a couple of hours, he said, but will be there all night.

The city manager said he is not sure when repairs might start and added that the condo association is responsible for bringing the building up to code.

Asked about evacuations at a Friday evening news conference, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the city of North Miami Beach has “taken the steps that we recommended to review to make sure that the recertification process was being done on a timely basis.”

Denasha and Kesha Alceus, 15 and 21, leaned over the back of their car Friday evening, talking to friends over the phone. Denasha said she had just woken up from a nap and was on her way to work when a man in a suit came knocking on their apartment on the fourth floor.

“They said we weren’t safe,” she said. “Nobody knew about this. Nobody even knew it was going on.”

Sobrino’s mother, who was sweating as she stacked boxes and luggage into a car, would be staying with her children in other parts of Miami, Sobrino said. She said the complex was occupied primarily by Latino residents, some of whom were very elderly.

“They’re crying, they’re afraid for their future, afraid about what to do with the furniture,” she said. “But it’s better to take care of the building,” she added, shrugging. “Champlain Towers – it woke everyone up.”

At 8 p.m., Crestview residents were still milling on their balconies. Local officials said police had cleared two floors of residents; the rest would have to leave later Friday night.

“We’ve deemed the building unsafe. By law, they cannot stay,” said Michael Joseph, a North Miami Beach city commissioner.

Published : July 03, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Rebecca Tan, Meryl Kornfield, Hannah Knowles

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Asean sees record new Covid cases and deaths, as situation worsens in Indonesia

The surge in Covid-19 cases in Southeast Asia continued on Friday, while the death toll was the highest on a single day, collated data showed.

Asean reported 48,507 new cases on Friday, higher than Thursday’s 46,968, while 902 patients died, up from the previous day’s 819.

Total Covid-19 cases in the region crossed 4.98 million, while the death toll rose to 96,125.

Indonesia reported a new high of 25,830 cases and 539 deaths on Friday, bringing cumulative cases in the country to 2,228,938 and the death toll to 59,534.

Medical experts were unsure if the country’s latest disease control measures from July 3-20 would be able to contain the spread as, they said, the measures still had many flaws.

Vietnam reported 545 new cases and three deaths on Friday, bringing cumulative cases in the country to 18,121 patients and 84 deaths.

Meanwhile, Ho Chi Minh City is planning rapid tests on more than 100,000 high school students and staff before the final exam of this academic year.

Published : July 03, 2021

By : THE NATION

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Chinese historical drama “1921” tops box office on debut

Domestic historical drama “1921” led the Chinese box office chart on its debut on Thursday, pocketing 81.45 million yuan (around 12.58 million U.S. dollars), China Movie Data Information Network reported Friday.

The movie, which intends to provide a panoramic view of the founding of the Communist Party of China on July 1, 1921, generated a daily earning that accounted for nearly 70 percent of the day’s total.

Hitting the big screen on the same day, historical movie “The Pioneer” garnered 15.6 million yuan, ranking second on the daily chart. It revolves around the revolutionary deeds of the Party’s pioneer Li Dazhao.

Coming in third was romantic comedy “Man in Love,” which earned about 5.47 million yuan on Thursday.
 

Published : July 02, 2021

By : Xinhua

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Covid situation aggravates in Asean with nearly 47,000 cases and over 800 deaths

Southeast Asia reported the highest number of Covid-19 cases and deaths on a single day in months, collated data showed on Thursday.

Asean logged 46,968 new cases, higher than Wednesday’s 40,545, while 819 patients died, up from the previous day’s 731.

The number of Covid-19 cases in the region since the outbreak crossed 4.93 million, while the death toll has risen to 95,224.

Malaysia reported 6,988 new cases and 84 deaths on Thursday, bringing cumulative cases in the country to 758,967 and the death toll to 5,254.

The government has imposed curfew in some parts of Kuala Lumpur and Selangor as infections in these areas have been rising continually.

Vietnam reported 713 cases on Thursday, bringing cumulative cases in the country to 17,576 with 81 deaths.

Ho Chi Minh City aimed to increase its active case finding capacity by testing 1 million people per day, using rapid test kits and Pool-PCR method to contain the outbreak.

Published : July 02, 2021

By : THE NATION

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Indonesias volcano Merapi emits hot clouds

Indonesias most active volcano Merapi has emitted hot clouds four times as far as 1,300 m to the southwest and southeast, the Geological Disaster Technology Research and Development Center said Thursday.

The third hot clouds were sliding down 1,300 m to the southwest at 6:39 a.m. with an amplitude of 22 mm for 125 seconds.

Based on monitoring from midnight to 12:00 a.m., the 2,968-m-high volcano, which is located on the border between Yogyakarta and Central Java provinces and now on the status of the third-level of danger, has also released incandescent lava four times as far as 500 m to the southeast.

The ejection of volcanic material could reach an area within a radius of 3 km from the summit if an explosive eruption occurs, according to the center. Photo taken on July 1, 2021 shows white smokes spewing from Mount Merapi, seen at Cangkringan village, Sleman district, Yogyakarta of Indonesia.

Published : July 02, 2021

By : Xinhua

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Princess Diana statue unveiling brings together feuding Princes Harry and William

LONDON – Britains Prince William and Prince Harry were reunited on Thursday for the unveiling of a life-size statue of their late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, on what would have been her 60th birthday.

In a joint statement, Prince William and Prince Harry said: “Today, on what would have been our Mother’s 60th birthday, we remember her love, strength and character – qualities that made her a force for good around the world, changing countless lives for the better.

“Every day, we wish she were still with us, and our hope is that this statue will be seen forever as a symbol of her life and her legacy.”

During the short ceremony, William and Harry together pulled away a green cloth covering the monument, while a small group of guests looked on. Diana’s siblings – her brother, Earl Charles Spencer, and her two sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes – were among the attendees.

The bronze statue of Diana is surrounded by three children, one of whom is hiding behind her.

Kensington Palace said in a statement that the statue aims to reflect Diana’s “warmth, elegance and energy” and that the children “represent the universality and generational impact of The Princess’ work.”

“The portrait and style of dress was based on the final period of her life as she gained confidence in her role as an ambassador for humanitarian causes and aims to convey her character and compassion,” the palace added.

Hundreds of well-wishers gathered outside the palace in hopes of catching a glimpse of the action. Some attached birthday balloons and pictures of the princess to the railings.

London is not lacking in memorials to Diana, still revered as “the people’s princess.” There’s a playground at Kensington Palace, a fountain in nearby Hyde Park and a walkway at St. James’s Palace. The National Portrait Gallery’s collection includes more than 50 images of the photogenic royal.

This latest tribute was commissioned from sculptor Ian Rank-Broadley, whose portrait of Queen Elizabeth II appears on all British coins.

The statue has been installed in the newly redesigned Sunken Garden, one of Diana’s favorite places at her former home. The palace said the garden still features some of Diana’s best-loved flowers, including forget-me-nots. It’s also where Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, held their official engagement photo call.

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From Friday on, the garden will be open to the public during the palace’s opening hours.

There has been much debate in Britain about what sort of statue would pay appropriate homage to Diana. Some art critics have objected to the idea of a work that is lifelike and traditional, arguing that it would betray Diana’s modern image. Feminist critics have said the commission should have gone to a female artist.

But many royal watchers were more curious about what the unveiling would reveal about the state of the royal family.

Prince Charles, Diana’s ex-husband, is in Scotland and wasn’t among the small group of family and friends in attendance. The spouses of William and Harry sat this one out.

So all eyes were on the two brothers, who were last seen in public together at the April funeral of their grandfather, Prince Philip. After the service, they were seen walking side-by-side, deep in conversation.

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At this ceremony, they wore dark suits and seemed relaxed as they talked and laughed with guests, and each other.

William was 15 and Harry 12 when their mother died in a car accident in Paris in 1997. She was 36 years old, the same age as Harry is now. William is 39.

When the brothers commissioned the statue, in 2017, their relationship was in a radically different place. They were neighbors: Harry lived in a cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace, and William and his family lived in the palace itself. Together, they promoted charities and in particular drew attention to the stigma surrounding mental health – something they continue to do, but on different platforms and in different countries, with Harry having given up royal responsibilities, and perks, and living in California.

In a March interview with Oprah Winfrey, Harry said, “I love William to bits,” but adding that their relationship now is one of “space.”

In that interview, Harry made a string of claims about the royal family, including allegations of racism. He also said that his family cut him off financially and that his father and brother were “trapped” within their royal lives.

Even apart from the tensions with his family, Harry has spoken about how returning to Britain has often been difficult for him.

“For most of my life, I always felt worried, concerned, a little bit tense and uptight whenever I fly back into the U.K., whenever I fly back into London,” he said. “For me, London is a trigger because of what happened to my mom.”

During his time in the U.K., he attended a charity event for sick children in west London and also delivered a speech for the Diana Award, a charity set up in memory of his mother that focuses on young people and social change.

“Our mom believed that young people have the power to change the world,” he said in a video message.

Published : July 02, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Karla Adam

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Our poor little town of Lytton is gone: Village at center of Canadas heat wave devastated by catastrophic fires

Until this week, “Canadas hot spot” might have seemed like a charming nickname for Lytton, British Columbia, a tiny town where summer temperatures soar.

But after a week of tragedy, the tagline has an ominous edge. Lytton broke successive Canadian heat records early this week, with temperatures peaking at 121 degrees on Tuesday afternoon. Then the fires swept in.

By 6 p.m. Wednesday, Lytton’s 250-odd residents had been ordered to evacuate by the town’s mayor as explosive wildfires neared .

On social media, residents offered accounts of their escape and, with cell service apparently down in much of the region, tried to find out what had become of friends and relatives.

“Our poor little town of Lytton is gone,” one resident, Edith Loring Kuhanga, wrote on Facebook. “This is so devastating – we are all in shock! Our community members have lost everything.”

In an email sent the next morning to members of the media, local councilor Lilliane Graie wrote that most residents escaped with “only the clothes on our backs.”

The damage to the village was likely “catastrophic,” Graie wrote in the message, which she said was sent on behalf of Mayor Jan Polderman and other officials without internet access. Officials shared a link for evacuees to register for support services.

At a news conference conference, provincial officials said that the impact of the fire was still being assessed.

Mike Farnworth, British Columbia’s public safety minister and solicitor general, said that it had destroyed most homes and structures in Lytton, as well as the ambulance station and the local Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment.

Some residents were unaccounted for, in part because people scattered when they evacuated, Farnworth said.

“This has been a very difficult day,” Farnworth said, “and the days ahead are going to challenge us.”

British Columbia Premier John Horgan said that he had spoken to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who offered his assistance. He warned that the fire risk remained “extreme” in almost every part of the province, with 62 new fires and 29,000 lighting strikes in the past 24 hours.

“Lytton has been devastated,” the premier said, “and it will take an extraordinary amount of effort to get that historic location back to what it was.”

One video filmed by residents on Wednesday showed the village shrouded in reddish haze, with black smoke billowing from trees, buildings and cars.

Lytton’s weather station webcam went offline that evening at 5:40 p.m. local time, around the time that a power outage hit nearby. The last weather reading from the station came just a minute later, with temperatures of almost 99 degrees and winds of 42 mph.

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Lytton’s climate nightmare comes amid a wave of hot weather across British Columbia. It is the result of the same “heat dome” caused by high pressure – which forces the heat down rather than allowing it to rise, in turn making the air even hotter – that has led to record heat in U.S. cities like Portland and Seattle.

Lytton had set records for high temperatures for three days in a row – soon surpassing the highest temperature ever recorded in Las Vegas.

The heat may have already had a devastating impact across much of British Columbia, with elderly and other vulnerable residents appearing to have been hit hardest.

British Columbia’s Coroners Service had received reports of 486 sudden and unexpected deaths between June 25 and Wednesday afternoon, Chief Coroner Lisa Lapointe said in a statement, well over double the usual number.

Founded at the confluence of two major rivers during the Gold Rush, Lytton’s economy once revolved around forestry but it is now mainly a destination for white-water rafting.

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It routinely reports some of the highest temperatures in Canada, due to a combination of dry air and low elevation.

Polderman told a local radio station this week that he’d hoped the town’s “hot spot” slogan wouldn’t be quite so literal.

“I’d rather be known as Canada’s hot spot for education, health care, quality of life than for having the hottest temperatures,” he said on Wednesday.

Polderman made a quick drive into Lytton on Wednesday night after ordering the evacuation and told CTV News that the town had been “engulfed” by flames.

“I’m just hoping that all the residents got out,” Polderman added.

Lytton’s evacuation came amid a broader swath of wildfires. Two fires to the north of Lytton, centered on Sparks Lake and McKay Creek, had a combined area of 35 square miles, according to the wildfire service, with both classified as “out of control.”

Officials said Thursday that the cause of the fire was still under investigation, but that it was separate from a wildfire that was burning southeast of the village. Horgan said that he had “anecdotal information” consistent with reports that the fire was caused by a train moving through the community.

“There was little or no time to warn the community,” he said. “In fact, it was the mayor himself that got the first whiff,” and “within minutes, the city was engulfed.”

Published : July 02, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Adam Taylor, Antonia Noori Farzan