Daniel Pomplun jolted awake. It was 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, and he heard the crackling of flames. He noticed the power was out, and he rose from bed and went to the window.
They had been fast asleep, and Daniel and his wife, Cindy, had missed the warnings. The residents of Santa Rosa, Calif., had been evacuating for more than three hours already as the rapidly spreading wildfire approached. The red glow through the window told Daniel it was too late. The fire was here.
“Cindy! Wake up!” Pomplun, 54, shouted, shaking her. “We’ve got to go!”
They threw on the closest clothing: for Cindy, a light T-shirt and cargo pants, and for Daniel, a Minnesota Vikings sweatshirt and University of Minnesota sweatpants. They grabbed the car keys and ran to the front door.
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The swimming pool at the Pomplun home, where they took refuge as the Tubbs fire burned through their neighborhood, destroying their home. (Stuart Palley/For The Washington Post)
Jose Luis Rodriguez waited in line Friday to fill plastic jugs in the back of his pickup truck with water for drinking, doing the dishes and bathing.
But there is something about this water Rodriguez didn’t know: It was being pumped to him by water authorities from a federally designated hazardous-waste site, CNN learned after reviewing Superfund documents and interviewing federal and local officials.
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Rodriguez, 66, is so desperate for water that this news didn’t startle him.
“I don’t have a choice,” he said. “This is the only option I have.”
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More than three weeks after Hurricane Maria ravaged this island, more than 35% of the island’s residents — American citizens — remain without safe drinking water.
A Canadian man who was freed along with his family after five years in militant captivity in Pakistan said his captors authorized the killing of one of his children and raped his wife.
“The stupidity and the evil of the Haqqani network’s kidnapping of a pilgrim and his heavily pregnant wife engaged in helping ordinary villagers in Taliban-controlled regions of Afghanistan was eclipsed only by the stupidity and evil of authorizing the murder of my infant daughter, Martyr Boyle,” Joshua Boyle told reporters upon his arrival at Toronto’s Pearson Airport Friday night.
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He said his captors’ actions were a retaliation for his “repeated refusal to accept an offer” from them.
Boyle, his American wife, Caitlan Coleman, and their three children were freed Thursday in a mission carried out by Pakistani forces based on intelligence from US authorities.
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Couple freed from militant captivity arrived in Canada Friday night
Stuffed by their captors into the back of a car with their children as they were being ferried across the rugged tribal areas of northwest Pakistan, an American woman and her Canadian husband were in the final moments of their five-year ordeal as hostages.
But suddenly, shooting erupted. One of their abductors, a Taliban-linked militant, shouted, “Kill the hostages.”
The militants found themselves cornered by Pakistani troops. The gun battle ended, and soldiers pulled the family from the vehicle, to be taken by helicopter to Islamabad. They were safe. The Pakistanis, acting on information provided by American intelligence and collected from drones that had been tracking the hostages, had pulled off Wednesday’s risky operation.
President Trump will scrap subsidies to health insurance companies that help pay out-of-pocket costs of low-income people, the White House said late Thursday. His plans were disclosed hours after the president ordered potentially sweeping changes in the nation’s insurance system, including sales of cheaper policies with fewer benefits and fewer protections for consumers.
The twin hits to the Affordable Care Act could unravel President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement, sending insurance premiums soaring and insurance companies fleeing from the health law’s online marketplaces. After Republicans failed to repeal the health law in Congress, Mr. Trump appears determined to dismantle it on his own.
Without the subsidies, insurance markets could quickly unravel. Insurers have said they will need much higher premiums and may pull out of the insurance exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act if the subsidies were cut off. Known as cost-sharing reduction payments, the subsidies were expected to total $9 billion in the coming year and nearly $100 billion in the coming decade.
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President Trump signed an executive order on health care in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Thursday.Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
Born premature, 15 weeks early and weighing just a pound and half, she spent the first three months of life in a neonatal intensive care unit. And her struggle had just begun.
Tori recalls being 8 when her mother asked her to carry out a drug deal. When she was 11, her uncle, whom she describes as a father figure, died of a heroin overdose.
Left to fend for herself, Tori says she did not even see a dentist or primary care physician — despite her fragile birth — until she was 10.
Her mother, a recovering heroin addict, has been clean now for three years, but Tori lives with her grandparents.
“I consider myself as a parent, and my mom the kid,” Tori, describing her early childhood, said in an interview in her grandparent’s home near Dayton. “She’d never take care of me, never feed me. I had to feed myself.”
An elderly Napa County couple found dead from the devastating wildfires sweeping Northern California “were happy right up until the last minute,” one of their sons told ABC News.
Officials identified Charles and Sara Rippey as two of the 15 people killed from the 17 fires consuming over 115,000 acres across the state.
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Courtesy of Mike Rippey
An undated photo of Charles and Sara Rippey who died in the Northern California wildfires.
The toll from Northern California’s ranging wildfires continued to grow Tuesday evening as officials said the fires destroyed up to 2,000 structures and killed at least 17 people.
The devastating losses establish firestorms among the most destructive in California history. The estimated losses of homes, businesses and other buildings jumped from 1,500 to 2,000, and officials fear the death toll will also continue to rise.
Sonoma County alone has received about 200 reports of missing people since Sunday night, and sheriff’s officials have located 45 of those people, said county spokeswoman Maggie Fleming.
The majority of the fatalities are from Sonoma County, where huge swaths of the city of Santa Rosa were leveled by the Tubbs fire. Eleven people have died in Sonoma County as of 7 p.m. Tuesday, officials said. Two people have died in Napa County, three in Mendocino County and one in Yuba County, Cal Fire officials said.
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Penny Wright discusses the loss of her home in the Fountaingrove neighborhood of Santa Rosa, Calif.
Sonoma County said it had received more than 100 phone calls to its missing person hotline as wind-powered wildfires swept through California wine country overnight, destroying at least 1,500 homes.
Officials said they were combing through the calls and believed some could be duplicates.
At least 10 people have died in the blazes as more than a dozen wildfires consumed parts of California wine country. Gov. Jerry Brown declared an emergency in eight counties, including Napa and Sonoma, and asked for a federal declaration of a major disaster for the entire state.
Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano said seven people had been killed there in fire-related incidents — and “that number’s going to change.” The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection confirmed that two people had been killed in Napa County, as well as one person in Mendocino County.
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A helicopter drops water on a wind-driven wildfire in Orange, California on Monday. Mike Blake / Reuters
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
The swimming pool at the Pomplun home, where they took refuge as the Tubbs fire burned through their neighborhood, destroying their home. (Stuart Palley/For The Washington Post)
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Couple freed from militant captivity arrived in Canada Friday night
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Penny Wright discusses the loss of her home in the Fountaingrove neighborhood of Santa Rosa, Calif.
James' World 2 