Can Ancient Ruins Be Protected From Wildfires? Greece Is Trying.

© Byron Smith for The New York Times


© Byron Smith for The New York Times


A Russian drone hit a fire truck driving to a call in the village of Kushuhum outside Zaporizhzhia on 1 September, injuring four rescuers, the head of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ivan Fedorov, reported. The crew was on its way to a house fire that Russian shelling had started. The strike came hours after a countrywide Russian air assault overnight.
Fedorov said a Russian drone struck the State Emergency Service vehicle in Kushuhum as it drove to put out a fire. The truck took damage, and the crew was hurt. He said the men were under the supervision of medics.
The Main Directorate of the State Emergency Service in Zaporizhzhia Oblast confirmed the attack, and added that all four injured firefighters had been taken to hospital with injuries of differing severity. The directorate specified what the crew had been sent to: a fire in a detached house in the suburb, started by Russian shelling.

Over the past 24 hours, Russian attacks on Zaporizhzhia city and district killed two people and injured eight, Fedorov said. Russian forces carried out strikes on 57 settlements across the region.
Overnight into 1 September, Russia attacked with ballistic and cruise missiles, anti-radar missiles, Banderol munitions, and 218 Shahed-type strike drones, about a third of them jet-powered, Ukraine's Air Force reported. By preliminary data, air defenses downed or suppressed 199 targets. Odesa and Kyiv oblasts were the main directions of the strike.

Russia killed 12 people across Ukraine, among them a citizen of India, and injured dozens, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. Russia killed four people and injured 13 and damaged a five-story residential building, and 50 people were evacuated. Nearly 350 rescuers worked in Kyiv and the surrounding oblast alone.
In Kyiv, a ballistic strike on Ukrzaliznytsia railway facilities killed seven people, six of them railway workers, and one more employee remains hospitalized. The capital's overall toll for the night stood at eight killed.
In Odesa Oblast, Russian drones, guided bombs, and missiles injured seven civilian men, four of whom went to hospital, and struck the Orlivka ferry crossing on the border with Romania again, the regional prosecutor's office found.
As of May, Ukraine has documented 11,000 Russian first-person-view drone attacks on civilians, among them repeat strikes on the same spot once medics and firefighters arrive. Ukraine's UN envoy has built part of the case for expelling Russia from the Security Council on that practice.
Rescue workers in Zaporizhzhia have been caught that way before. After a strike on a Poltava Oblast gas site, Russia hit the crews who came to the fire. Firefighters in Chernihiv Oblast went to hospital mid-rescue. In Kryvyi Rih in August, a second Russian attack reached rescue workers thirty minutes after a drone strike on a shopping center, and a repeat strike killed a 20-year-old volunteer paramedic in Kyiv the same month.


© Mark Abramson for The New York Times


© Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press


© Aamir Qureshi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Home in Billings was also set on fire, with victims representing four generations of a blended family
A man killed eight of his relatives, including four children, on Sunday evening in a shooting at a home in Billings, Montana, that was also set on fire, according to authorities and local media reports.
Police have characterized the case as a family disturbance, according to Montana news outlet KULR.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Billings Fire Department

© Photograph: Billings Fire Department

© Photograph: Billings Fire Department


© Simon Jowitt/UGC, via Reuters

Firefighters describe being pushed to limit by a brutal wildfire season, with key leadership roles going unfilled
The US has faced a critical shortage of firefighters at the US Forest Service (USFS) this summer as thousands of fires erupted across the country.
Despite officials’ claims that the firefighting workforce was stronger than ever, the agency has failed to keep pace with escalating conditions and the catastrophic fires fueled by them, according to nine firefighters who spoke to the Guardian anonymously, because they are barred from disclosing the information to the public.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers/Getty Images

© Photograph: San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers/Getty Images

© Photograph: San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers/Getty Images




© WTVG, via Associated Press


© Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated Press


© Mark Landler/The New York Times


© Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press