Video Animation of Titan Implosion Gets 5 Million Views in 11 Days (VIDEO)

Interesting viddy.

At the New York Post, "Animation of Titan sub’s demise garners 5 million views in 11 days."

It's got 15 million hits now.

Submersible Passengers Died in Implosion (VIDEO)

We all know now.

But this was the big breaking letdown for so many yesterday. I personally saw no hope of survival, and the more we saw the more my initial intuition proved correct.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Search crews found debris from craft on ocean floor near Titanic shipwreck."

There's more at NPR (a great piece), "James Cameron says the Titan passengers probably knew the submersible was in trouble."

And an incredibly lucid and scientifically-informed interview with Cameron, at CNN with Anderson Cooper:

The interview continues here, "James Cameron on the 'surreal irony' of Titanic wreck and Titan implosion."

Debris From OceansGate Search Confirmed as Coming From External Body of 'Titan' Sub

It was almost beyond hope, but now we know.

The U.S. Coast Guard press conference on the loss of the OceansGate submersible is about to begin. 

The company issued a statement, per CNN. Follow along:

JUST IN: Debris discovered within the search area of the missing Titanic submersible has been assessed to be from the external body of the sub, according to a memo reviewed by CNN https://t.co/AD7UcVJ3zQ

— CNN (@CNN) June 22, 2023

Many of Hurricane Ian’s Victims Were Older Adults Who Drowned

I thought about this as soon as the first fatalities were announced. Were folks crushed to death by collapsing homes or building, or struck by debris rocketing through the air at 150mph? Not really, though there may have been some of that.

People drowned, especially older people.

At the New York Times, "The storm, Florida’s deadliest since 1935, has been linked to the deaths of at least 119 people in the state, many of them older residents who lived near the coast":

A 57-year-old woman in the Sarasota area developed hypothermia and died after her roof caved in and she became stuck in floodwaters. A 96-year-old man drowned after getting trapped under a parked car in Charlotte County. In Fort Myers Beach, the body of an 85-year-old woman was found in a tree several days after the storm.

After Hurricane Ian punched Florida last week, shredding beachfront towns and flooding large swaths of the state, the storm was blamed by state and county officials for at least 119 deaths, more than any other hurricane had caused in Florida since 1935. Officials in North Carolina linked four deaths there to the storm as well.

Though the circumstances of many of those deaths remained unclear, information released this week by state and local governments provided a distressing portrait of a hurricane that at times overwhelmed both residents and emergency responders.

At least 54 of the victims died by drowning, records showed. Nearly two-thirds of the dead were in two counties on Florida’s southwest coast, Charlotte and Lee, that faced monstrous storm surge and winds exceeding 150 miles an hour. And many of those who died were older. Of the 87 people for whom an age or approximate age has been released so far, 61 were at least 60 years old. Eighteen of them were in their 80s, and five were in their 90s.

A review of medical examiners’ accounts, law enforcement reports and 911 audio obtained through open-record requests, as well as interviews with relatives of those who died, revealed a chaotic, harrowing response to a storm whose path forecasters had struggled to pinpoint.

Calls poured into emergency dispatch centers by the thousands as the storm bore down. Residents who stayed put despite evacuation orders scrambled for safety as their homes filled with water or blew away. Some died when the power went out and they were no longer able to use oxygen machines.

The suicides of two men in their 70s who killed themselves after seeing the damage in Lee County are also included in the official count of storm-related deaths.

In Fort Myers Beach, Daymon Utterback, 54, decided to ride out Ian at home, as he had done in previous hurricanes, according to his uncle, Terry Goodman. Mr. Utterback, a machinist with a manufacturing company who was known for a sharp sense of humor, did not expect the storm to be very severe, his uncle said.

As storm surge flooded their house, Mr. Utterback’s fiancée stood on top of a grill to keep her head above water, according to a next-door neighbor, Steve Johnson. She survived the hurricane, but Mr. Utterback became trapped while trying to open a window, and drowned.

Mr. Johnson said he escaped the storm by trekking through chest-high water, against powerful winds. When he returned to his house the next day, after the floodwaters receded, he saw Mr. Utterback’s body. He put a towel over the body, he said.

“It was just so sad to see him there,” Mr. Johnson said.

Mr. Utterback was one of at least 53 people who died because of the storm in Lee County. In neighboring Charlotte County, the sheriff’s office said 24 deaths there had been linked to the storm, though only two of those had been reported to state officials as of Friday.

“Everyone, I know, tries to do the best they can,” said Mr. Goodman, adding that he did not blame anyone for what happened to his nephew. “It’s just — decisions that individuals make sometimes don’t work out the way they want them to,” he said.

Though Ian’s devastation was most severe in southwest Florida, the storm also caused flooding and dangerous travel conditions in other parts of the state and the region. Officials in 15 Florida counties each reported at least one storm-related death, including a 22-year-old man who died when his vehicle hit a fallen tree in Polk County, near the middle of the state, and an 85-year-old man who fell off a ladder while putting up a tarp in Putnam County, in northeast Florida.

In New Smyrna Beach, on the Atlantic coast, Alice F. Argo kept calling and calling for help when the storm hit. At first, her husband, Jerry W. Argo, was refusing to go to a shelter, and the couple wanted help to get to safer ground across the street. As night fell, Ms. Argo’s calls for assistance grew more frequent and more urgent. Her husband, 67 years old and 250 pounds, had fallen and hit his head, and she could not lift him.

A Volusia County dispatcher told Ms. Argo that at least 400 people had called for help and that rescuers would get to the Argos when they could. “You’ve got to do your best to wait it out,” the dispatcher said, according to a 911 recording.

Ms. Argo, 72, was insistent.

“Well, hurry up!” she said. “If he dies, you’re going to be in trouble!”

The county was waiting for special vehicles that could drive through floodwaters, the dispatchers said. Police records show that Ms. Argo called for help a total of 10 times over the course of nearly 12 hours. The last time was at 10:38 p.m. By then, Mr. Argo was already dead.

“I feel if they had gotten there sooner, he might have survived,” said Lisa Mitchell, Ms. Argo’s daughter. “My mom said when they got there, they picked him out of water, put him on her coffee table, gave him CPR, shocked him and everything, and couldn’t revive him. Of course not — because he was there an hour and a half already.”

Andrew Gant, a spokesman for the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office, said that the sheriff, Mike Chitwood, had ordered a review of how the case was handled. The county has six vehicles that can navigate floodwaters, and the National Guard later brought five more to the county.

“The review of the incident (and the entire storm) is just in its initial phases, but I believe one likely outcome is acquisition of more of the high-water trucks,” Mr. Gant said in an email...

Still more.

 

Actress Anne Heche on Life Support, Not Expected to Survive (VIDEO)

At the Los Angeles Times, "Anne Heche not expected to survive after fiery Mar Vista crash that left her in coma."

And from ABC 7 Eyewitness News Los Angeles: 

He Built a Home to Survive a Civil War. Tragedy Found Him Anyway

Mind-boggling and depressingly sad. 

At NYT, "C. Wesley Morgan once believed that the place he built, which included a 2,000-square-foot bunker, was the safest house in Kentucky":

RICHMOND, Ky. — The doorbell rang in the night, waking C. Wesley Morgan. He rolled out of bed and walked into the foyer, looking through the arched glass entryway into the dark. Nobody. These phantom rings had been happening lately; most likely there was a short somewhere in the system. The rain didn’t help. He went back to bed.

Minutes later, he awoke to the sound of a crash, then the rattle of gunfire. It was coming from upstairs, where his daughter Jordan was sleeping. Mr. Morgan rushed to the French doors leading out of his bedroom, opening them to see a man in a mask and carrying an AR-15 walking down the stairway.

The man looked blankly at Mr. Morgan, who had time to shout one word: “Why?”

What could drive a man to try to kill a family he had never met? The explanation Mr. Morgan had been given for the attack on that early February morning — mental illness — he found almost insultingly weak. He was certain that it had to have been a deliberate part of some larger plot. For more than a decade, he had been vigilant about such dangers, convinced that the country was hurtling toward civil war. He put millions of dollars behind his fears, building a fortress in the countryside. He knew that some thought he was paranoid.

A dozen years later, a sense of impending breakdown has spread beyond the fringes, taking hold across a country that can at times feel dangerously unhinged. Pandemic, lockdowns, fire and flood, ubiquitous rage and shocking violence: A deadly rampage can suddenly break out in the big-city suburbs or in a remote little town, at work, at the grocery store, at school or even at home. Mr. Morgan thought he had prepared for whatever catastrophes might come, diligently constructing a place that could guarantee his family’s safety. Now he wonders if he had invited the catastrophe that followed.

On a warm evening at a public campground in central Kentucky, Mr. Morgan, 71, sat in a folding chair, watching his wife, Lindsey, and 14-year-old daughter, Sydney, take a walk among the campers and R.V.s. He was spending his nights in agony over Jordan’s death, he said. She had been shot at least 11 times in her bed. Just thinking about it, he said, was like being strangled.

His days were spent overseeing repairs to his bullet-riddled house and talking to potential buyers.

He had built the house in the Obama years, when he was convinced society was on the verge of collapse. Here his family could live in secluded comfort, and if the social fabric truly tore apart, as he expected it would, they could wait out the chaos in an abundantly stocked underground bunker. Now he couldn’t wait to be rid of it.

A $6.5 million estate was a far cry from Mr. Morgan’s childhood. He grew up in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, where his father drove a small-town taxi and where, he said, he spent his early years without indoor plumbing.

He left the state as a young man to work as a federal investigator, uncovering illicit gun markets and underground gambling rings. But his father pressed him to come back home and put down roots.

So in 1982, he took out a loan to buy a liquor store in Richmond, a small city about a half-hour southeast of Lexington. Southern Kentucky in the 1980s and 1990s was still a desert of dry counties, and Richmond was the closest oasis for miles. Mr. Morgan eventually opened Liquor World, a giant alcohol emporium in Richmond, where, he said, “we were doing over a million a month.” He married and had a daughter, Jordan. He divorced, married again, and Sydney was born. He went to Ireland to watch horse races, took the family to Paris, bought a boat. And in 2009, he got to work on the house.

“My vision was that I was building a place I was going to die in,” he said. “The finest everything. I spared no expense.”

On 200 acres of Kentucky meadow just outside of Richmond, his vision became a 14,300-square-foot reality. Nine bedrooms, three kitchens, a six-car garage, a steam room, a saltwater pool — the front entryway alone cost $75,000.

“My feelings were that we were going to have civil unrest because there was so much going on with Obama,” Mr. Morgan said. He believed that people were going to rise up against the attempts to overhaul health care and restrict guns, and that societal collapse would soon follow. He envisioned “roving bands of gangs” hunting for food and necessities in the aftermath. He bought riot gear, bulletproof vests and a small arsenal of firearms, so that “if you had to engage a band of marauders, you would have a chance to save your family.”

The keystone of his survival plan was what lay underneath: a shelter 26 feet underground, beneath a 39-inch solid ceiling. It contains 2,000 square feet of bedrooms and common space along with a stocked food pantry, an air filtration system and two escape tunnels, one of them 100 feet long. The company that installed the shelter suggested that Mr. Morgan keep quiet about it, because “if anything ever happened, there’d be people that try to take the bunker.”

But even as he built his fortified sanctuary, politics in Kentucky were shifting, becoming more favorable for those with the kind of hard-right convictions that Mr. Morgan held. Jordan, who had become an ambitious and outspoken conservative herself, landed a job out of law school in the new gubernatorial administration of Matt Bevin, the firebrand Republican. Mr. Morgan decided to run for the Kentucky House of Representatives and in 2016 became the first Republican in decades to win his district.

Within days of taking office, he had become a lightning rod for criticism and derision. Good government groups expressed shock when Mr. Morgan proposed a slew of bills that would help the retail liquor business. Democratic lawmakers lambasted his measures allowing teachers to carry guns and granting immunity to motorists who unintentionally hit protesters blocking traffic.

But Mr. Morgan’s bitterest ire from his time in politics was reserved for his fellow Republicans. He blamed them for his negative press coverage, complained that the party did little to support his legislative proposals and publicly blasted Republican leaders who were implicated in scandal. When Mr. Morgan ran for re-election, another Republican challenged him in the primary, and won.

The whole experience convinced Mr. Morgan that he was the target of a corrupt power structure. Lauding the “patriots” of QAnon in Facebook posts, he mounted a quixotic primary campaign against Senator Mitch McConnell, whom he condemned as a “deep-state traitor.” When the primary was over, Mr. Morgan was done with Kentucky.

He listed his house on Zillow — “perfect for grand scale entertaining and family living,” the listing read, with “the highlight of the property” being “a $3 Million, 2,000 sq. ft. Nuclear/Biological/Chemical Fallout Shelter.” He assumed the listing would be seen only by buyers interested in a $6.5 million property. But it went viral.

“A cult compound,” one commenter wrote online; “getting mole people vibes,” added another. Strangers drove out to the house to gawk, and articles were written about it on real estate websites and in the state papers.

Jordan, 32, told her father she had come to feel unsafe at the house. In February of this year, she was hired by a law firm in Lexington and planned to move as soon as possible to an apartment in the city. “She must have sensed that she was being watched,” he said.

Someone had been watching, marking the house’s entry points and taking detailed notes on the family’s movements. Early on the morning of Feb. 22, prosecutors say, the watcher, Shannon V. Gilday, a 23-year-old former soldier who lived in the Cincinnati suburbs, climbed up to a second-floor balcony and began his attack.

“He stood and looked at me without any emotions, like he was programmed,” Mr. Morgan said of the moment he first encountered Mr. Gilday in the foyer. At that point, Jordan was dead.

Now Mr. Morgan was the target.

Bleeding from his arms, Mr. Morgan crawled across the bedroom carpet, dragging himself around to the other side of his bed. His wife was gone, having rushed into Sydney’s bedroom next door. Mr. Morgan took a loaded pistol out the drawer of his nightstand. When the French doors opened, he emptied the gun.

“I shot 12 times,” he said. “I was out of bullets. But that did something to him. He turned and shot twice through Sydney’s door, and then he went into the bathroom.”

Mr. Morgan quickly considered his other guns — another pistol in the drawer, the 12-gauge shotgun in the closet, the AR-15 in the guest bedroom — but saw his cellphone on the nightstand. He grabbed it and called the police. “See, that’s another thing I hate myself for,” he said. If he had just gotten another gun, he could have killed the intruder there and then.

Instead the attacker hurried out into the night. The authorities arrived soon after and Mr. Morgan found himself in an ambulance unaware of what had happened to Jordan, Sydney, Lindsey or the man who had tried to kill them all...

Keep reading.

 

Fifty-One Illegal Aliens Found Dead Inside Abandoned Trailer-Truck in San Antonio (VIDEO)

Let's remind folks that these poor souls aren't just "migrants." They're illegal aliens under U.S. law. There's no excuse for their deaths. Our border should be secure. 

Earlier this month Missouri Senator Roy Blunt spoke on the floor of the Senate slamming the Biden administration's border policies, noting that, "During President Biden's time in office, the Department of Homeland Security has encountered illegal immigrants crossing our border more than 2.8 million times. In not quite a year-and-a-half, 2.8 million people were encountered crossing the border."

That's the background for the horrible and tragic deaths of 51 illegal migrants at the outskirts of San Antonio yesterday. 

At the Texas Tribune, "51 people, including five kids, are dead in San Antonio after being trapped in a truck in sweltering heat: Of the 16 migrants found alive in the trailer on the city’s southwest side, five have since died":

San Antonio officials said Tuesday that the number of migrants who have died after being trapped in a tractor-trailer on Monday has reached 51 after another migrant died at a local hospital. Forty-six migrants were declared dead at the scene, and five of the 16 migrants found alive in the sweltering trailer have since died after being taken to hospitals.

Local officials said that 39 of the victims were men and 12 were women. The immigrants are believed to be from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. Bexar County Commissioner Rebeca Clay-Flores said 34 of the victims have been identified. She did not reveal any other information about the victims during a Tuesday press conference in San Antonio.

News4SanAntonio reported Tuesday that five children are among the dead. A man from Guatemala has confirmed the death of his two daughters, Griselda and Carla, whose ages were not disclosed...

Migrant deaths near the border are common as people attempt to cross forbidding terrain without adequate water. Before Monday, the worst smuggling-related mass fatality in recent Texas history was in 2003, when 19 people died after being trapped in an unrefrigerated dairy truck for hundreds of miles.

President Joe Biden called the incident "horrifying and heartbreaking" on Tuesday and blamed "smugglers or human traffickers who have no regard for the lives they endanger and exploit to make a profit.

"This incident underscores the need to go after the multi-billion dollar criminal smuggling industry preying on migrants and leading to far too many innocent deaths," Biden said in a written statement. He also highlighted what he called "a first-of-its kind anti-smuggling campaign with our regional partners" that he announced earlier this month. Biden said the effort has resulted in more than 2,400 arrests in its first three months "and that work will only intensify in the months ahead."

Biden decried "political grandstanding around tragedy" a day after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott blamed the deaths on what he called the president's "deadly open border policies.”

[Bexar County Commissioner Rebeca] Clay-Flores also slammed Abbott for politicizing the tragedy.

"While bodies were still being removed, and others being taken to local hospitals, he chose to be heartless and point the finger. Shame on our governor," she said. "His words were also a complete contradiction to state that this tragedy was due to open border policies. If there was such a policy as open borders, we wouldn't have had over 50 human lives trying to enter this country the way they did. We wouldn't be mourning the deaths of so many people who were simply seeking a better life."

At his daily press conference Tuesday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador expressed condolences to the families of those who died and said his government will be investigating the deaths of 22 Mexican citizens and helping their families return their bodies home.

“This is bitter proof that we must continue to insist on supporting people so that they do not have to leave their villages to look for a life on the other side of the border,” López Obrador said...

Still more.

 

Roman Abramovich, Russian Oligarch, Hit by Sanctions

This guy's getting slammed

Chelsea's a diamond on the football world and the team plays in the Premier League, the top division in England.

This is from yesterday at WSJ, "Russian Billionaire Roman Abramovich, Owner of Chelsea Soccer Club, Is Sanctioned by U.K."

And from this evening, "Roman Abramovich U.S. Hedge Fund Investments Are Frozen":

Hedge funds told to freeze Russian oligarch’s assets after he was sanctioned by the British government.

A number of U.S. hedge-fund firms that have investments from Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich have been told to freeze his assets after he was sanctioned by the British government Thursday, according to people familiar with the instructions.

A message from fund administrator SS&C Globe Op to one firm said, “Currently accounts attributed to Roman Abramovich are blocked from transacting, as such any distributions, redemptions or payment cannot be made and no subscriptions or contributions can be accepted.”

SS&C, whose clients include hedge funds and other investment managers, said in the message it was monitoring the situation for guidance from the U.K. Treasury, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation and the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority. Other funds have received similar messages, according to people familiar with the matter.

The guidance likely puts a stop to recent efforts by Mr. Abramovich to sell his interests in a slew of hedge funds, said people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Abramovich, who for years has accessed hedge-fund investments through New York-based adviser Concord Management, had been trying to sell interests in funds including those managed by Empyrean Capital Partners in Los Angeles and Millstreet Capital Management in Boston, the people said.

Mr. Abramovich had been seeking to sell the funds on the secondary market since at least late February, the people said. For at least some of the funds, the investor is Concord, with Mr. Abramovich or entities connected with him being the underlying investor, said people familiar with the matter. People familiar with the matter said Concord was a small investor in Millstreet.

Mr. Abramovich also is invested through Concord in hedge funds including Millennium Management, Sarissa Capital Management and Sculptor Capital Management, SCU -2.09% formerly known as Och-Ziff Capital Management, said people familiar with the matter. It couldn’t be determined Friday if he had tried to sell his interests in those funds as well. Mr. Abramovich’s hedge-fund portfolio includes investments in many small funds betting on and against stocks, one person briefed on the matter said.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Abramovich didn’t respond to requests for comment. Concord didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The New York Times earlier reported Mr. Abramovich’s ties to Concord.

The U.K. on Thursday froze Mr. Abramovich’s assets and prevented him from doing any business in the country or selling assets including soccer club Chelsea F.C.

While managers in the past welcomed Concord’s money—the firm has a reputation for being a thoughtful, long-term investor in the hedge-fund industry–the relationship is proving delicate following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the cascade of sanctions it triggered.

Managers would have welcomed a sale as a way to distance themselves from a sanctioned oligarch, and some had been thinking about forcibly redeeming Mr. Abramovich from their funds, said people familiar with the matter.

One manager had been considering the possibility of replacing Mr. Abramovich with other investors, another person familiar with the matter said...

 

Tetiana Perebyinis Identified as Woman in Evacuation of Kyiv, of Family Blown Up in Viral Video

This is the woman, along with her two kids and a man, a church volunteer, who was with them. 

The video went viral for 24 hours. CNN showed it over and over again, as I described at my post, "CONTENT WARNING: Russian Cruise Missile Strike Kills Family in Irbin, Ukraine (VIDEO)."

The woman's been identified. She was a tech worker for a Silicon Valley software company. Her husband learned about her death, and their children, on Twitter.

At the New York Times, "They Died by a Bridge in Ukraine. This Is Their Story":

KYIV, Ukraine — They met in high school but became a couple years later, after meeting again on a dance floor at a Ukrainian nightclub. Married in 2001, they lived in a bedroom community outside Kyiv, in an apartment with their two children and their dogs, Benz and Cake. She was an accountant and he was a computer programmer.

Serhiy and Tetiana Perebyinis owned a Chevrolet minivan. They shared a country home with friends, and Ms. Perebyinis was a dedicated gardener and an avid skier. She had just returned from a ski trip to Georgia.

And then, late last month, Russia invaded Ukraine, and the fighting quickly moved toward Kyiv. It wasn’t long before artillery shells were crashing into their neighborhood. One night, a shell hit their building, prompting Ms. Perebyinis and the children to move to the basement. Finally, with her husband away in eastern Ukraine tending to his ailing mother, Ms. Perebyinis decided it was time to take her children and run.

They didn’t make it. Ms. Perebyinis, 43, and her two children, Mykyta, 18, and Alisa, 9, along with a church volunteer who was helping them, Anatoly Berezhnyi, 26, were killed on Sunday as they dashed across the concrete remnants of a damaged bridge in their town of Irpin, trying to evacuate to Kyiv.

Their luggage — a blue roller suitcase, a gray suitcase and some backpacks — was scattered near their bodies, along with a green carrying case for a small dog that was barking.

They were four people among the many who tried to cross that bridge last weekend, but their deaths resonated far beyond their Ukrainian suburb. A photograph of the family and Mr. Berezhnyi lying bloodied and motionless, taken by a New York Times photographer, Lynsey Addario, encapsulates the indiscriminate slaughter by an invading Russian army that has increasingly targeted heavily populated civilian areas.

The family’s lives and their final hours were described in an interview by Mr. Perebyinis and a godmother, Polina Nedava. Mr. Perebyinis, also 43, said he learned of the death of his family on Twitter, from posts by Ukrainians.

Breaking down in tears for the only time in the interview, Mr. Perebyinis said he told his wife the night before she died that he was sorry he wasn’t with her...

 

Ukraine's Refugee Crisis: The Crush to Flee Karhkiv

A humanitarian disaster.

Posted by NBC's Richard Engel, "Ukrainians desperate to leave Kharkiv."

Ukraine Parents Rush 18th-Month-Old Baby to Hospital; Boy Hit by Shrapnel Amid Russian Shelling of Port City of Mariupol (VIDEO)

Devastating tragedy. Poor thing didn't make it.

The photos and video are heartbreaking.

The video's here, it's graphic. 

And at Sky News, "Ukraine invasion: Young mother collapses in boyfriend's arms after toddler killed in Russian shell attack":

Difficult to watch footage shows an unconscious 18-month-old boy being rushed to hospital after his home was shelled in the southern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.

Overdose Deaths in the U.S. Are Rising at Troubling Rate

One can't possibly imagine the loss of a loved one to opioids, among other things.

I mean, the loss of a loved one is tragic in any case, but death from overdose doubly so, as it creates so many "what ifs." It's not like losing a parent in the twilight years of life, for as sad as that is, it's an inevitability. (And both my parents are gone, so I'm speaking from experience.) But if I lost either one of my sons right now, to overdose especially, I think I'd probably fade away. My psychology hasn't been so great this last two years. I've had a lot of anxiety (especially in March 2020 and the overnight shift to emergency remote online instruction) and bouts of depression. The last thing I need is death in the family.

In any case, God bless those facing this crisis. It's unbearable, and worse, it's not one on the top of the radar of public policy. 

At the New York Times,  "A Rising Death Toll":

Drug overdoses now kill more than 100,000 Americans a year — more than vehicle crash and gun deaths combined.

Sean Blake was among those who died. He overdosed at age 27 in Vermont, from a mix of alcohol and fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. He had struggled to find effective treatment for his addiction and other potential mental health problems, repeatedly relapsing.

“I do love being sober,” Blake wrote in 2014, three years before his death. “It’s life that gets in the way.”

Blake’s struggles reflect the combination of problems that have allowed the overdose crisis to fester. First, the supply of opioids surged. Second, Americans have insufficient access to treatment and other programs that can ease the worst damage of drugs.

Experts have a concise, if crude, way to summarize this: If it’s easier to get high than to get treatment, people who are addicted will get high. The U.S. has effectively made it easy to get high and hard to get help.

No other advanced nation is dealing with a comparable drug crisis. And over the past two years, it has worsened: Annual overdose deaths spiked 50 percent as fentanyl spread in illegal markets, more people turned to drugs during the pandemic, and treatment facilities and other services shut down.

The path to crisis

In the 1990s, drug companies promoted opioid painkillers as a solution to a problem that remains today: a need for better pain treatment. Purdue Pharma led the charge with OxyContin, claiming it was more effective and less addictive than it was.

Doctors bought into the hype, and they started to more loosely prescribe opioids. Some even operated “pill mills,” trading prescriptions for cash.

A growing number of people started to misuse the drugs, crushing or dissolving the pills to inhale or inject them. Many shared, stole and sold opioids more widely.

Policymakers and drug companies were slow to react. It wasn’t until 2010 that Purdue introduced a new formulation that made its pills harder to misuse. The C.D.C. didn’t publish guidelines calling for tighter prescribing practices until two decades after OxyContin hit the market.

In the meantime, the crisis deepened: Opioid users moved on to more potent drugs, namely heroin. Some were seeking a stronger high, while others were cut off from painkillers and looking for a replacement.

Traffickers met that demand by flooding the U.S. with heroin. Then, in the 2010s, they started to transition to fentanyl, mixing it into heroin and other drugs or selling it on its own.

Drug cartels can more discreetly produce fentanyl in a lab than heroin derived from large, open poppy fields. Fentanyl is also more potent than heroin, so traffickers can smuggle less to sell the same high.

Because of its potency, fentanyl is also more likely to cause an overdose. Since it began to proliferate in the U.S., yearly overdose deaths have more than doubled.

No one has a good answer for how to halt the spread of fentanyl. Synthetic drugs in general remain a major, unsolved question not just in the current opioid epidemic but in dealing with future drug crises as well, Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University drug policy expert, told me.

Other drug crises are looming. In recent years, cocaine and meth deaths have also increased. Humphreys said that historically, stimulant epidemics follow opioid crises.

Neglecting solutions

A robust treatment system could have mitigated the damage from increasing supplies of painkillers, heroin and fentanyl. But the U.S. has never had such a system.

Treatment remains inaccessible for many...

Still more.

 

West Palm Beach: 79-Year-Old Woman Falls to Her Death After Drawbridge Opens as She Walked Her Bike Across (VIDEO)

This is absolutely infuriating! 

How can something like this possibly happen --- falling down a drawbridge 12 stories to your death is not a thing?!! 

Heinous, reckless disregard for human life.

At the Palm Beach Post, "West Palm Beach police say 79-year-old woman fell to her death from Royal Park Bridge: The woman was about 10 feet away from safety when the bridge started to rise Sunday afternoon, West Palm Beach police said."

And WESH 2 News Orlando, "Detectives identify woman who fell to her death from Florida drawbridge as 79-year-old":

PALM BEACH, Fla. — Officials have identified a woman who fell about 50 feet to her death from a Florida drawbridge Sunday.

Investigators said the 79-year-old West Palm Beach resident was walking her bicycle in the pedestrian lane of the Royal Park Bridge connecting the town of Palm Beach to West Palm Beach around 1 p.m. She was coming from the island to the city of West Palm Beach when the incident happened.

Detectives say the woman's name will not be released due to Marsy's Law, but she was positively identified by authorities on Monday night.

According to a news release from police, the woman was approximately 10 feet from the westernmost section of the elevating bridge span, approaching the stationary segment of the bridge, when she attempted to hold on to a railing, then lost her grip and fell about 50-60 feet to her death.

A skateboarder on the fixed span tried to help but could not reach her.

"There was a man who tried to help this woman as she was holding on to the elevated bridge, but unfortunately he was not able to rescue her,” said Mike Jachles, public information officer for the West Palm Beach Police Department. "Unfortunately and tragically, she fell, landing about 50 to 60 feet below, where the mechanical parts to the bridge are, and she died on impact."

The bridge remained closed for six hours while the on-scene investigation was conducted...

The story notes that "the bridge tender was 'very upset'." 

You think? 

Grim Scale of Destruction in Kentucky (VIDEO)

The governor says it'll take years to rebuild.

At NBC News, "‘I’ve got towns that are gone’: Kentucky struggles to count dead after tornadoes."

At at the New York Times, "In Kentucky, Tallying the Grim Scale of Destruction":

MAYFIELD, Ky. — Darryl Johnson didn’t know what his sister did at the Mayfield Consumer Products factory or why she worked nights; he knew only that her husband dropped her off on Friday evening and that they never heard from her again.

He stood in a gravel lot next to the giant ruin of metal and wood, which just days ago was the candle factory where his sister, Janine Johnson-Williams, had clocked in for her shift. The factory where he works, 45 miles up the road, shut down when the storms were approaching, Mr. Johnson said. He could not find anyone in Mayfield to tell him anything.

Late Sunday evening, Mr. Johnson finally got word. His sister was dead.

Sunday was a day of wrenching discoveries across the middle of the country, where an outbreak of tornadoes on Friday night, including one that traveled more than 220 catastrophic miles, left a deep scar of devastation. But as work crews dug through ruins and small-town coroners counted the dead on Sunday, there was at least a glimmer of hope that the death toll may not end up being as enormous as initially feared.

On Sunday evening, Troy Propes, the chief executive of Mayfield Consumer Products, which runs the candle factory that was demolished by the tornado, and which many dread may account for the largest number of deaths in the storm, said in an interview that only eight people had been confirmed dead at the factory and another six remained missing.

Bob Ferguson a company spokesman, said that of the roughly 110 workers who were on the late shift at the factory on Friday night, more than 90 employees had been accounted for.

Still, Gov. Andy Beshear told reporters on Sunday that the state had not confirmed those figures and said that search operations were still underway at the site.

“There have been, I think, multiple bodies,” Mr. Beshear said. “The wreckage is extensive.”

The death toll from the tornado swarm includes people who had been killed in Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri and Tennessee, but the greatest loss of life was unquestionably in Kentucky, where Mr. Beshear said that at least four counties had tolls in the double digits. A dozen people were killed in Warren County, several of them children; in Muhlenberg County, there were 11 victims, all in the tiny town of Bremen. One was 4 months old.

“We’re still finding bodies,” Mr. Beshear said. “I mean, we’ve got cadaver dogs in towns that they shouldn’t have to be in.”

In Edwardsville, Ill., officials released the names of six people who were killed while working at an Amazon delivery depot that was hit by a tornado. “At this time, there are no additional reports of people missing,” the Edwardsville Police Department said in a statement on Sunday.

More than 50,000 customers were still without power in Kentucky on Sunday afternoon, and more than 150,000 were without power in Michigan, which was also affected by the sprawling storm. Mr. Beshear said that there were “thousands of people without homes” in Kentucky, though the sheer amount of devastation made precise figures, at this point, impossible to come by.

“I don’t think we’ll have seen damage at this scale, ever,” he said.

But even as the accounting of the storm was slowly being made, much was still dreadfully unknown.

In the town of Dawson Springs, where Mr. Beshear’s father was born and where his grandfather owned a funeral home, the list of the missing was eight pages long, single-spaced, the governor said in an interview on CNN.

On Sunday, slabs lay bare on the ground where houses once stood along the streets of Dawson Springs. Mattresses hung in trees and were strewn about the housing lots. Teams hunting for victims and survivors left spray-painted symbols on walls that remained standing.

Families bearing bruises and scrapes from Friday night walked among the wreckage, looking through the rubble for medicine, insurance information and food stamps.

Lacy Duke and her family were searching for two missing cats. In between calling out names, they described 22 seconds of deafening horror on Friday night as they huddled in a storm cellar, and an aftermath that was almost apocalyptic. Their house had folded like an accordion. A mobile home had disappeared. A teenage boy had injured his arm so badly it had to be amputated. The boy’s grandmother had been stuck under a car.

“This year’s been rough,” Ms. Duke said. She had been in a car accident, her son had been sick with Covid-19 and, at the auto part supplier where she had worked, everyone in her department had been laid off. “And then this happened.”

The storm system’s devastation exposed all along its path a late-night world of warehouses and factories on the outskirts of towns and cities, where people worked handling the seasonal traffic of packages or making scented candles for $8 to $12 an hour. A current of anger ran through the communities that were hit badly in the storm, as people demanded to know why so many were still on the job after alarms had sounded about the approaching danger.

At a Sunday morning church service in Granite City, Ill., when the pastor asked for prayers for the loved ones of the six who died in the Amazon warehouse, Paul Reagan, a retired steelworker, raised his hand...

Deadly Devastation: More Than 70 Killed in 'One of the Toughest' Tornado Events in Kentucky History (VIDEO)

Terrible.

Just biblical destruction and death. 

Watch the most dramatic images here. 

Story from the Lexington Herald-Leader, "‘One of the toughest nights in Kentucky history’: 70 or more feared dead in tornadoes":

LEXINGTON, Ky. — The “most severe tornado event in Kentucky’s history” is believed to have claimed the lives of at least 70 people, Gov. Andy Beshear said at a news conference in Graves County late Saturday morning.

He said the death toll “may in fact end up exceeding 100 before the day is done.”

Beshear said earlier Saturday that four likely tornadoes wreaked havoc on the state with one traveling for more than 200 miles in Western Kentucky, “something we have never seen before.”

More than a dozen Kentucky counties have reported damage from the storms, he said.

Deaths have been reported in multiple counties.

The hardest hit appears to be Graves County in far Western Kentucky, where Mayfield, the county seat, has been devastated, the governor said.

A collapsed roof at a Mayfield candle factory with about 110 people inside resulted in mass casualties and will account for the largest loss of life in the state as a result of the storms, he said.

As of just before noon, Beshear said about 40 of the 110 people inside the plant had been rescued. The last successful rescue there was at about 3:30 a.m., Beshear said, though he said “we still hope and pray that there’s some opportunity for others.”

Eleven people died in Muhlenberg County, Coroner Larry Vincent said. Other counties reporting deaths and injuries were Hopkins, Marshall, Warren, and Caldwell, Beshear said Saturday.

Up to 10 counties may have casualties, he said. Widespread damage was reported in Bowling Green. A Bowling Green police spokesman said Saturday morning that the number of people hurt or killed was not yet known, as first responders were still working to find people amid the wreckage.

The National Weather Service in Louisville said evidence of damage from an EF-3 tornado with estimated wind speeds of 150 mph had been found by its survey team in Bowling Green.

The weather service office in Paducah said in a tweet that crews were out doing storm damage surveys Saturday, but that it will take some time to get a rating on the intensity of the tornado that hit Mayfield.

More than 75,000 Kentucky customers remained without power as of 1:17 p.m. Saturday, according to the website PowerOutage.us.

Keep reading.  

Also, via Reuters, "Six Amazon workers killed after tornadoes reduce warehouse near St. Louis to rubble."

Oh, the humanity. 

More at Memeorandum. 

Sixth Victim Has Died After Deadly Car Attack at Waukesha Christmas Parade (VIDEO)

One the kids has passed away. 

How awful. Terrible. Tragic.

Scroll down, at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, "Sixth person, an 8-year-old boy, dies from parade injuries":

Jackson Sparks, an 8-year-old boy who was marching in the Waukesha Christmas Parade with his baseball team, has died from his injuries.

 

Actor Michael K. Williams Found Dead in His New York City Apartment

As they say, life imitates art sometimes, and in this case, it's particularly sad. 

At the New York Post, "‘The Wire’ actor Michael K. Williams found dead in NYC apartment."

It's weird, but I just watched "The Wire" a few weeks back for my first time. Williams plays "Omar," a gangland stickup man, who by far is the most lovable character on the show, if that's the best way to describe him.

He won't soon be forgotten, as apparently he was universally beloved among television fans. 

May he rest in peace. 

Five Sailors Dead in Navy Helicopter Crash off San Diego Coast (VIDEO)

Tragic.

At the Sand Diego Union-Tribune, "Navy identifies 5 San Diego sailors killed in helicopter crash off coast":

SAN DIEGO — Five sailors killed when their helicopter crashed on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and fell into the sea were identified by the Navy on Sunday.

The six-person crew of the MH-60S Seahawk helicopter were conducting routine operations on the flight deck of the carrier Tuesday afternoon when the helicopter crashed.

One of the helicopter’s crew was rescued from the water following the crash and is in stable condition ashore. Five Abraham Lincoln sailors were injured in the crash; two were also taken ashore for treatment.

A three-day search for survivors was called off Saturday morning and the Navy switched to an effort to recover their bodies. The cause of the crash is under investigation.

The sailors killed include two pilots, an aircrewman and two corpsmen, the Navy said. All were attached to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 8, which is based at Naval Air Station North Island.

The Abraham Lincoln also is based at the air station.

The MH-60S helicopter typically carries a crew of about four and is used in missions including combat support, humanitarian disaster relief and search and rescue.

The Seahawk was conducting routine flight operations from the ship when it crashed about 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday. The ship has been conducting exercises off the San Diego coast in preparation for a deployment next year, the Navy has said.

Lt. Sam Boyle, a spokesperson for the San Diego-based 3rd Fleet, said the Navy is making every effort to recover the helicopter and the remains of the sailors.

They are:

Residents in New Jersey and New York Still Recovering Following Hurricane Ida (VIDEO)

Following-up, "New Jersey. God Have Mercy."

New Jersey. God Have Mercy

No matter your politics, this story is heart-wrenching.

At NYT, "New Jersey’s Stunning Storm Toll Includes Many Who Drowned in Cars":

Malathi Kanche was heading home after dropping her son off at college Wednesday evening when the small S.U.V. she was driving was overwhelmed by floodwaters set off by the remnants of Hurricane Ida.

With the vehicle stalled in waist-deep water on Route 22 in Bridgewater, N.J., she and her 15-year-old daughter climbed out. They clung to a tree as the torrent rushed past, according to a close family friend and neighbor, Mansi Mago.

Then the tree gave way, and “the water took her,” said Ms. Mago, recounting what another stranded motorist told her hours later.

A 46-year-old software designer who emigrated from India, Ms. Kanche was one of six people who were still missing two days after Ida caused the deaths of at least 25 people in New Jersey — more fatalities than in any other state — as the monster storm whipped its way onto the Gulf Coast and tore north to New England.

At least a third of the fatalities in New Jersey were people who drowned after being trapped in vehicles in a densely packed state known for its car culture, its tangle of highways, suburban commuter towns and limited public transportation.

Screeching alerts had sounded repeatedly on cellphones late Wednesday, warning people to stay inside, but no travel bans were put in place in New Jersey or New York, where 16 deaths — including 13 in New York City — have been linked to the storm. On Friday, in an acknowledgment of the growing risk of flash flooding as climate change unleashes increasingly intense storms, New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, announced that the city would increase its use of evacuation orders and travel bans.

In New Jersey, officials have not said whether they would apply new measures to protect the state given the likelihood of severe storms happening more frequently.

As the region faced the daunting task of cleaning and clearing debris, Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey and Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York both said that they were expecting large infusions of recovery aid from the federal government. President Biden was expected to soon declare the states a federal disaster area.

Mr. Murphy, speaking from Millburn, whose downtown commercial corridor had been ravaged by the rain, said the state would make $10 million in aid available to small businesses. “If you’ve been crushed and you can prove it, you’re eligible,” Mr. Murphy said.

Early Friday, Mr. Murphy was still warning people to remain off the roads, especially near waterways that had not yet crested.

“Many motorists have been caught by surprise that the depth of the water on a road that they thought they knew — not to mention the swiftness of the current,” Mr. Murphy said.

“You can easily be swept away or trapped,” he said. “And sadly, we have many examples of just that.”

The stories of devastation and death were tempered by the many tales of rescue in New Jersey, where the National Weather Service said three tornadoes also touched down during the storm, leveling homes in South Jersey but killing no one.

In South Plainfield, N.J., a 31-year-old man, Danush Reddy, lost his footing as he was walking alongside a flooded roadway and was swept into a 36-inch-wide sewer pipe, borough officials said. His body was found miles away...

Police found Ms. Kanche's body on Friday.  

Keep reading.