Postman Dutifully Delivers Mail To Neighborhood That's Not There Anymore

A postal worker delivers mail to a neighborhood that
no longer exists after the California wildfires

One of the strangest videos I've seen coming out of that California wildfire tragedy is one you'll see here:

It's a United States Postal Service van delivery mail to a neighborhood that was completely incinerated by the wildfires.

It seems stupid at first, but then I'm thinking what else was the guy to do? The mailboxes were still somehow intact.

I guess he just hopes the people who lived in those destroyed houses will come back. Maybe even get a millisecond of normalcy back in their lives by checking their mailboxes.

Here's the spooky video:

Very Scary High Rise Fire, Collapse In Iran

The Tehran high rise building on fire before it collapsed

In case you missed it on the news, there was a very scary fire in a high rise building in Tehran, Iran yesterday in which at least 30 people, mostly firefighters, lost their lives.

The fire was in what is described as Tehran's iconic Plasco building, which was the first high rise built in Tehran, back in the early 1960s. The structure was 17 stories tall.

It's unclear at this point what started the fire, but it appears it began on the ninth floor and spread quickly.

The building's collapse came as scores of firefighters sprayed water on the structure, trying to put out the flames.

In the awful video clip you'll see below, there's a firefighter on a tall aerial ladder spraying water into flaming windows when the building came down. That firefighter survived, but many of his colleagues died.

Watch:

 

Security Camera Catches Home Burning In Fort McMurray Cataclysm

Screen shot of security camera from inside a home
being destroyed by the Fort McMurray, Canada
wildfire disaster, that's still ongoing. 

I've been writing about that terrible wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada on my sister blog, Matt's Weather Rapport, but a video from that fire deserves a look here, too.

The video is a security camera inside a Fort McMurray home. Its occupants had fled 20 minutes before the video starts as the wildfire bore down on the neighborhood.

The couple that lived in the home is safe, but sadly their home, like many, many others in Fort McMurray, are gone.

Homeowners James and Candace O'Reilly watched the video of their home being destroyed on an iPhone as they fled the fire.

The escape was harrowing enough. They were stuck in bumper to bumper traffic as everyone fled. Hot embers rained down on the truck and camper they were towing.

The couple felt terrible that there was no time for them to save the clownfish you see in the tank, and important papers and photographs, and ashes of Candace O'Reilly's late father.

The video shows the fire just outside the windows, then breaking through. It happens very fast.

It's also a good instruction to not try to stay behind to save your home in a wildfire like this. The people who lived there would have died had they tried to stay and fight.

Here's the video:

 

Sad, Brief Visits To Fukushima Earthquake Nuclear Disaster Haunts

Five years ago, that epic earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster struck Japan.

Fukushima, the town where the nuclear plants basically imploded and leaked like crazy, was abandoned, perhaps never to be resettled. Or if it is, not for awhile.

People who lived there sometimes return for brief visits, but they have to try to move on with their lives the best they can.

Photojournalists Guillaume Bression and Carlos Ayesta have been periodically going to the Fukushima disaster zone to document the deteriorating, abandoned ruins.

In their latest release of photos, called "Retrace Our Steps," people who had fled returned to once familiar surroundings and posed as if they were doing what they would normally do before the disaster hit.

The photographers asked their subjects to act as normally as possible, and at least pretend to do what they would do if things were normal.

The photos in this post are examples of Ayesta and Bression's work. Click this link for more. 

Reports Featureshoot.com: 

"Ayesta and Bression asked that they sit how they would have years earlier, before the catastrophe, when daily life lumbered on as usual. It was a process, says Ayesta, of 'reconstituting normal life in chaos,' a 'life that will never be the same as before.'"  

Earlier, they photographed vegetation taking over everything in the post-apocalyptic landscape.

The photographs are haunting and terribly sad. There's something about images depicting normal life interrupted, destroyed and abandoned that send shivers down my spine.

H/T to Bored Panda for this. 

Don't Send Bottled Water To Flint, Michigan

Filmmaker and Flint, Michigan native Michael
Moore is quite understandably calling for the arrest
of Michigan's governor for allowing the mass
poisoning of Flint through the municipal water system. 

I'd swear, the state government in Michigan really wants to send the city of Flint back to the age of the Flintstones.

They've caused the now notorious problem of causing lead and other pollutants to flow through city residents' tap water in a move to save money and show how conservative they are.

Go Austerity!

You'd think a modern society would ensure everybody gets safe drinking water. Not in Michigan.

So what if a few thousand kids get brain damage from lead? We're fiscally conservative, Yay!

As the crisis intensifies, the administration of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder still seems totally aloof. If poisoning an entire city and seeming not to care doesn't get every American's blood boiling, I don't know what does.

I love the irony in the slogan on Snyder's web site: "Getting it right. Getting it done."

Ooookay!

Now, I grant you the headline on this post sounds awfully mean. Don't send bottled water to Flint? Let them drink lead?

After all, the water in Flint is still unsafe, Snyder's administration is clearly not interested in really fixing the problem and Flint's kids face lifelong disabilities because of the lead in the water.

So shouldn't we be sending everybody in Flint clean, safer bottled water instead of forcing them to literally drink poison from their taps?

Well, yes, that's been an OK short term solution. But forcing a city to live on mountains of water bottles is no way to go.  We definitely DO need to give a huge shout out to all the individuals, corporations and celebrities who have sent, or encouraged us to sent lots and lots of bottled water to Flint.

But, enough.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's administration
expected people to drink water that looked like this
in Flint. Maybe we should force him to drink that water? 

I have to agree with none other than Flint, Michigan native Michael Moore who also says it's time to stop sending bottled water.

Moore, the famous guerilla filmmaker, is not being mean to his home town either.

Moore, instead says Michigan needs to dig deep. And fast. The first step is getting that idiot Snyder and his administration out of the way.

Moore compares the Snyder administration to terrorists. To be honest, I think Moore is being rather fair.  Read his words and decide for yourself:

"There's not a terrorist organization on Earth that has yet to figure out how to poison 100,000 people every day for two years - and get away with it. That took a Governor who subscribes to an American political ideology hell-bent on widening the income inequality gap and conducting various versions of voter and electoral suppression against people of color and the poor."

Snyder had appointed "emergency managers" to several financially troubled Michigan communities., including Flint.

These managers reported to Snyder, so local residents and voters had very little say in what went on in their cities.

The many critics of these managers said it disenfranchised voters and the managers were insulated and indifferent to what residents were saying. (If elected officials were in charge, they'd presumably be voted out of office if they ignored voters. Especially ones up in arms about poisoned drinking water. )

And as the New York Times suggested, the worry is and was that "emergency managers are more concerned with fiscal discipline than public health."

Flint would be Example A of that.

Since the Snyder administration seemed so indifferent to the crisis in Flint, Moore wants Snyder kicked out of office and arrested.

I totally agree. Despite his denials and faux expressions of concern, what he did or more accurately, didn't do to Flint is criminal.

As Moore says:

"The perp who allowed the poisoning to continue once he knew something was wrong -- and his minions who cooked the evidence so the public and the feds wouldn't find out, must be removed from office ASAP."

Moore also notes that Snyder says the EPA has no legal authority to tell him what to do with Flint. Really?

Earlier this week, we got news that way back in last January - a year ago! -  Snyder was telling Flint residents the water there was hunky dory and drink up!.

Mother Jones reported Thursday on an email from the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget to employees in a state office building in Flint.

"While the city of Flint states that corrective actions are not necessary, DTMB is in the process of providing a water cooler on each occupied floor, positioned near the water fountain, so you can choose which water to drink. The coolers will arrive today and will be provided as long as the public water does not meet treatment requirements."

By the "City of Flint" the email pretty much meant the aloof emergency manager appointed by Snyder.

My guess is that the Snyder administration was worried the public employees union would sue if they found out employees were drinking bad water.

Meanwhile, the residents of Flint, mostly African American, and many of them poor, were left to drink the scary water. Brown water for brown people, Governor Snyder?

Moore goes on to say that Snyder, with all his fiscal conservatism, along with previous administrations, did help Michigan develop an  $800 million surplus and $600 million in a rainy day fund. Moore says Snyder should use that money to fix Flint.

Snyder is the face of the state of Michigan broke Flint so he oughta pay for it, goes the logic.

That said, practically nobody, Moore included, doesn't trust Snyder's administration to fix the problem. Like the feds or not, they've got to step in even more.

Other sensible ideas Moore lists are to move people who want to from Flint to nearby districts that have safe water, at government expense. For those who want to stay in Flint, FEMA should set up temporary water supplies at each home.

The rest of us in the United States who are presumably not drinking lead-laced municipal tap water ought to care about Flint a lot.

First of all,it's a national tragedy and a disaster. Second of all, it's a cautionary tale. Yep, we don't want to pay high taxes to fund the government, and we don't like seeing governments waste money.

That is absolutely reasonable.

You need to strike a balance, though, and balance is now seriously lacking in American politics. Some Republicans, in particular, seem to be in a contest to see how badly they can screw over people without a lot of power. For fun and profit, I guess. Especially profit.

You know, African-Americans, Hispanics, poor people. OK, don't give these groups free hand outs. But don't take your hand and slap them across the face either.

As Slate points out, there's a lot of municipalities out there with marginalized population with aging infrastructure. Flint probably won't be the last town in the country to find out it has been poisoned. There's no political will, no desire to fix old pipes and other fixtures before its too late for residents.

I guess turning America into a Third World country is now political palatable, which is another real tragedy here.

In Michigan, Snyder's administration thought saving money was more important than protecting health and public safety. Maybe he thought if he caused brain damage to the voters of Flint, they'd be too stupid to vote against him in the next election.

But as Rachel Maddow's Town Meeting show in Flint demonstrated the other night, there are a lot of smart people in Flint.

Who won't take being victimized by some self serving politicians.

Are there others politicians like him across the nation?  If so, I hope we have the gumption to rise up against them, too.








 .

Let's Take Happy Selfies At The Site Of A Tragedy, Say Idiots

Awful people having fun with a selfie stick
at the site of the East Village blast and fire
in New York City.   

There they were, seven beaming women crowded together in the middle of  New York Street, sparkling smiles aimed at a camera on a "selfie stick."

You can see they're having a grand old time. Girls night out! What fun!

Behind them, you see lots of emergency vehicle, and a little more in the background, bright lights aimed at smoking rubble as firefighters search for bodies.

Oh, that's grim. Must be make believe, a movie set, right? Why else would these women be smiling?

It turns out, I guess it's fun to have a joyous time at the site of a tragedy.

The seven-women selfie was taken right near the site of that huge explosion and fire in New York City's East Village. You saw it on the news. The one that caused a spectacular fire. The one that leveled three buildings, killed at least two people and injured many more. The one that left dozens of people without a home and/or without a job.

Neighbors who live in the disaster zone say they don't like all the gawkers checking the scene out. I get that, but I also get how people want to see for themselves what happened. But how is this fun?

The selfie popped up the Twitter feed for EventPhotosNYC Friday evening.  I guess EventPhotosNYC on Twitter is meant to capture all the fun and frolic the Big Apple has to offer.

Obviously there was an immediate backlash on EventPhotosNYC to the seven women tragedy/happy selfie, and that spread super fast afterward through New York and beyond.

On the Twitter feed we had reactions like "Everything wrong in NYC summed up in one photo." and "Disaster porn selfies: The new hobby of the soulless."

The New York-focused news and entertainment website Gothamist got ahold of it, and rightly talked about how awful these people are.

Then these seven stupid women hit the big time. The front page of the tabloid New York Post.  The headline: "Village Idiots."

I'll say.

The seven women weren't the only ones taking happy selfies at the disaster site. Apparently a number of people have done it. I have no idea what they're thinking. Or not thinking.

As Gothamist noted, the behavior of these women, and the other people who took happy selfies at the explosion/fire site,  has to be pretty bad if none other than the New York Post is calling the selfies at the blast site "tasteless" and "heartless."

It shouldn't be spelled out like this, but there are apparently an incredible number of stupid people out there. But here goes:

Don't have fun and frolic at a disaster site. If you must go, try to help. And be respectful.

Geez!

Dramatic Dubai Fire: Metal And Glass Buildings Burn, Too

The massive fire in a 79-floor apartment building
in Dubai Friday.  

You might have seen the dramatic images out of Dubai, but this must have been a nightmare for the residents in this building.

The ironically named Torch Building, a 79-story residential apartment building burst into flames yesterday, and the large file burned for hours, raining debris on the streets below.

The Guardian said the fire appears to have been accidental, but there were some surprising glitches with this fire.

Apparently, fire alarms didn't go off right away. People weren't really aware until somebody in a nearby building called a receptionist in the Torch Building mentioning there was a fire.

It's unclear how many apartment are ruined, but it looks like some of the people who live in the lower floors will be able to get back in pretty soon.

Because of all the debris raining down, neighboring high rise apartment buildings were also evacuated, but those residents were allowed back in.

I haven't heard of many injuries, but you never know. As you might expect, any high rise building fire is very scary, and I imagine, very hard to extinguish.

Here's a CNN video of the scene. Pretty wild:

Horrible Taiwan Plane Crash Caught On Dash Cam

Stills from a dash cam video
of a terrible Taiwan plane crash today.  

Imagine driving down a freeway in a city when from behind the highrises to the left, a plane just misses the buildings, dives down sideways, clips the bridge you're on, then plunges into the river below.

Somebody in Taiwan caught that horrible sight today when a TransAsia flight with 53 passengers and five crew crashed today.  It's all on a dash came video that I've got on the bottom of this post. You'll probably see it all over the news, too.

At least 13 people died and most of the rest of the people on the plane are missing, presumably in the fuselage under the water or swept downstream by the river current.

Some survivors have been pulled from the wreckage.  Reuters says 15 people were rescued. 

One person on the bridge was hurt when the cab he was driving was struck. The plane missed apartment buildings to the left of the highway by just a few feet.

No word on the cause of the crash yet..

Here's the incredible video.

At Least The California Napa Earthquake Improved Skateboarding

Skateboarding on earthquake damaged
streets in California. 

I hate to make light of a disaster like Sunday's earthquake in Napa Valley, California, the one that injured dozens of people and caused such widespread damage.

But there was one teeny, tiny bright side to the quake.

The tremors buckled a lot of streets in the area. On one street, the newly heaved and crooked pavement provided an excellent new skate park for boarders.

Watch:

Yacht Fire: Someone Had A Worse Weekend Than You

Today was a perfect summer day where I live near Lake Champlain in Vermont.  

Worst possible start of summer: A $24 million yacht
burns near San Diego. 

Not surprisingly, there were a LOT of boats on the lake as people enjoyed a Sunday full of blue skies, bright sun, warmth and low humidity.

It looks like everyone had a good time, unlike the owners of a yacht that was being repaired near San Diego.

Something when wrong during the repairs and a fire ended up destroying the $24 million yacht.  The ultimate bummer at the start of summer

Somebody sent up a drone, which caught the dramatic fire.   

Dramatic Surveillance Camera Video of Harlem Explosion Is Beyond Scary

CBS News got its hands on surveillance video of that huge gas explosion that leveled two buildings in Harlem last week, killing at least eight people and injuring many more.    

The scene of last week's explosion in East Harlem.

As you'll see in the CBS report, below, a guy was walking down the street when the first concussion rained debris and broken glass very fast on top of him.

The debris came from the collapsing buildings, and windows blowing out in storefronts and apartments across the street from the blast

No word on who the guy is, but miraculously, it appears he's not hurt too bad.

It probably helped he was wearing a fairly heavy jacket, which maybe partly protected him from the rain of debris.

Here's the incredible CBS report and video. Hope THIS never happens again!

 

Amazing European Avalanche Caught On Tape

This morning,  posted this video in my sister blog, Matt's Weather Rapport   (Check it out! All things weather related!)

But I had to post the video here, too. It shows an avalanche in the Alps. Stay with it. It starts out kind of uneventful, but watch it develop. Amazing!

California Rim Fire Time Lapse Finds Beauty In Awfulness

Everybody, including the people who made the video in this post, can agree that there is nothing good to say about the massive Rim Fire near Yosemite National Park in California.

Rim fire in California in this photo by Don Bartlett
of the Los Angeles Times.  

It has already burned through more than 300 square miles of forest, and the fire rages on. It'll take weeks to fully put out, we're told.

The video, below, though, shows some cool time lapse images of the huge fire taken from a variety of perspectives. The fire has a certain beauty, even if it destroys huge tracts of forest and threatens a lot of property.

Watch:

Scariest Bus Crash Video Ever, Plus A Dramatic Semi-Truck Crash

I guess it's getting frightening on the roadways, at least if two videos that are going viral are any indication

The first has  to be the scariest video I've seen in a long time. A surveillance camera is rolling inside a bus in China when it was slammed by an oncoming semi truck.

The violence of the crash is shocking. Some passengers are thrown through the bus windows at great speed and force. Terrible.

The crash happened when for some reason the bus was backing up on a highway and was hit by an oncoming semi truck. 

The truck driver was killed, and obviously pretty much everyone on the bus was injured. But they all survived.

Here's the frightening, but somehow fascinating video:





In the second video, a truck plunges off a highway overpass in Texas. Unfortunately, the driver died, but none of the other motorists on the highways were hurt. The truck narrowly missed some cars, but everybody was able to get out of the way.

Amazing, isn't it, that the ubiquity of security cameras give us such windows into incidents, some, like these, horrible, that we never would have seen before. Here's the Texas crash:

"Weather Whiplash" A New Hazard, It Seems

I've been hearing the term "weather whiplash" bandied around lately, considering how the weather seems to be shifting in all kinds of weird directions and incredibly abruptly.

It can happen in a day, like the time last month went from 90 degrees to a freeze and snow within 12 hours.

High water cascades over a falls in Fairfax, Vermont
as the state has gone from near-drought to damaging
flood in less than a week  

The Midwest has been classic, going from major flooding, to major drought back to major flooding again from 2011 and 2013.

We just experienced this whiplash here in Vermont. It has been quite dry, and it looked as if we were headed toward a drought just a few days ago.

Now, we've got a destruction flash flood, and it's supposed to rain, a lot, over the next three days, raising fears of more flooding.

It seems every year now, we in Vermont get a storm that wipes out a bunch of roads and bridges.

Now it's happened again.

We had midsummer humidity yesterday and the day before. Today, it's a March-like 45 degrees, and it might snow in the mountains this weekend. Yes, Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of summer.

We used to say if you don't like the weather in Vermont, wait a minute and it will change. Now, I guess you have to say if you don't like the weather anytime, anywhere, wait a minute, it will become more extreme.

What's next for Vermont? Dust storms and tidal waves?

Adjusters Arrive At House Fires Before Firefighters

Well, this seems unsavory.

Reports out of Florida say adjusters, the people who help property owners navigate insurance and recovery after disasters, and repair contractors are showing up at house fires at the same time as firefighters get there, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel

If this were your house, would you want
an adjuster and contractors pestering you
to sign a contract for their services
at this moment?

There, as the house burns and firefighters struggle to contain the flames, the adjusters pressure the distraught homeowner to sign on with them and not talk to any competitors.

As a person who last week had to make major medical decisions about my dog who was critically ill, the midst of a crisis is not the best time to make rational choices.

So if somebody's house is burning, they're probably not thinking clearly about the pro and cons of which adjuster or contractors will do the best job.

Which is probably what some of these crooked adjusters have in mind. Hey, if you can't think it through, you can't ask the hard questions.

The adjusters say they arrive early because the homeowner is still there while the house is burning, but won't be there once it's out, because the house is uninhabitable.

Adjusters can be helpful, The Consumerist notes. After all, they can help people navigate the maze of insurance settlements, hiring contractors, overseeing cleanup and repair, etc.

But still. The fire truck chasers, like ambulance chasers, are kind of gross. How do they sleep at night?

Anything to make money, I guess

Scariest Moore, OK Tornado Vid Yet: Seen Overhead From Shelter Window

This video just popped up from that huge tornado in Oklahoma.

Somebody had a small window in their storm shelter in Moore and filmed what went on. They were just outside the outer edge of the huge tornado.

You can see that although it wasn't hitting them directly, it was causing quite a bit of damage in their neighborhood. But at least the houses are still (sort of) standing

Plan For Man's Nice Hot Shave Literally Backfires

A nice luxury for guys is a hot shave.

You know, go to the barber shop or wherever, have the professional put on some nice warm shaving cream and give you the closest, most relaxing shave you could ever have. I might even make an appointment.

If you want a hot shave, please don't
heat this can up on a stovetop.  

For the Do It Yourselfer, don't try what a guy in Florida did. His thought, according to the Tampa Bay Times, was to heat up a can of shaving cream on the stove, and Voila! a hot shave.

Well, he certainly got a close shave. The metal shaving can did what you'd expect it to do when heated. It blew up.

The guy was treated for cuts. There wasn't much damage to the house, but there was shaving cream all over EVERYTHING !

So after he got his stitches, the guy had some serious house cleaning to do. So much for the shave.

The Tampa Bay Times article helpfully notes you can get a nice home warm shaving kit from Walmart for about $65. Presumably, that's safer.

Comparing Sandy and the Ongoing New England Blizzard

Maybe it's because I'm a weather geek, but I found two really intriguing satellite photos today. One shows Superstorm Sandy in late October, and the other shows today's blizzard gathering strength near the East Coast.

A satellite photo of Superstorm Sandy,
October, 2012 Norw rhe weather front coming in from the west.

In both cases, the vast storm systems really intensified off the East Coast. In both satellite photos, a storm coming from the west across the United States was about to be absorbed by the offshore storm, and would make each tempest that much stronger.

It's interesting that both Sandy and the current blizzard are both immense, record breaking, super strong storms, and both satellite photos are so comparable and show similar weather scenarios playing out.

Obviously, Sandy and today's blizzard are different from each other, having developed differently.  During Sandy, the builk of the destruction was in New Jersey and the New York metro area, and most of the damage was from a storm surge.  There was some snow during Sandy, particularly in West Virginia, but that wasn't the main feature of Sandy

During this storm, the main problem is snow. And the focus of the blizzard is New England, not New Jersey and New York. There is the risk of severe coastal flooding in Massachusetts, and there will be a lot of damage, but it won't be as bad as Sandy in that regard.

Blizard of '13 growing off the East Coast Friday. Similar to
Sandy note the weather front coming in from the west

I live in Vermont. During Sandy, Vermont got some effects, with some relatively minor wind damage and some power failures.

In this blizzard, we're getting a fair amount of snow, probably amounting to a foot on average. But that's not too extreme for Vermont. The snow is probably doing more good than harm because the ski resorts will surely benefit from this.

I don't know if the similarities in the two storms have any significance. But it's fascinating to see weather history, at least in part, repeat itself.

Scary Video: Tornado Hits Mobile Walgreens

Up here in Vermont, we're expecting a big snowstorm tomorrow. We'll probably get more than a foot of snow from the storm, which is coming up from the Gulf Coast and will turn into a nor'easter.

For Vermont, the big snowstorm is probably more good than bad. The ski areas aren't complaining about it, given the fact it's the Christmas vacation week, and a lot of tourists and locals have been jonesing for a good powder day.

A tornado sweeps through Mobile, Alabama
on Christmas Day.

The price paid for this snow is the same storm system that is giving us this dump of white spun off a bunch of tornadoes in the Deep South.

Surveillance video of one tornado as it hit a Mobile, Alabama Walgreens just came out. One interesting thing is you notice is how the people there go from curious, to awestruck, to terrified as the storm approaches.

Luckily, nobody gets seriously hurt, though some people got cuts and other injuries from flying glass. It looks like the interior of the store stayed largely intact, which means the people who wisely ran to the back of the store, away from the windows were able to ride the thing out OK.

It is a pretty fascinating video. Watch: