crews

It is the latest wildfire call out for the Scottish fire service during the recent stretch of warm, dry weather.

Hundreds of firefighters, two helicopters and specialist resources were sent to the Cairngorms National Park where a blaze has been ongoing for four days.

Six square kilometres of land had been affected resulting in homes and businesses, including campsites and a ski resort in the Glenmore Forest Park area, being evacuated as a safety precaution.

A high volume pump has been used to draw water from Loch Morlich to support firefighting efforts.

On Sunday, fire crews said the fire was now “surrounded” and police began escorting residents and campers back to properties and campsites to collect personal belongings.

WASHINGTON — Crews are again draining the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as President Trump’s problem-plagued efforts to revamp the waterway pushes well past his initial goal of having it ready by July 4 to mark the nation’s 250th birthday.

The president at first suggested his renovations would last a century. But within weeks of the project originally reaching completion last month, the water was beset by an algae bloom and pieces of the new coating appeared to be peeling off the bottom.

Trump has blamed the peeling on vandals, though critics allege it’s from shoddy repair work.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whose agency oversees the National Park Service, told conservative podcaster Katie Miller in an interview released earlier this week that the new round of draining was planned. He also said that the water might still contain debris from an extensive Independence Day fireworks display over the National Mall.

“Drain the water, clean up the fireworks stuff,” Burgum told Miller, who is the wife of deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller. “Repair the vandalism that was done. Fill it back up again.”

The work on the Reflecting Pool is just one of a number of projects Trump has spearheaded across the nation’s capital. Most prominently, he demolished the White House’s East Wing to build a $400-million ballroom and plans to build a towering arch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

He initially announced his intentions to beautify the Reflecting Pool this spring, saying he wanted it completed before the nation’s 250th birthday celebrations.

Water was drained and Trump directed that the bottom be painted what he called “American flag blue.” In May, the president posted on his social media site of the pool: “The goal is to have it done, at this higher level, prior to July 4th — We are ahead of schedule!”

But problems began quickly after the initial work was finished. Trump blamed vandals, and court documents later showed that the National Park Service reported to the U.S. Park Police a June 9 incident in which a sharp knife or razor cut the pool’s new liner.

On Thursday, former Olympic canoe racer David Hearn pleaded not guilty in D.C. Superior Court to deliberately damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn has said he reached inside the pool to examine the peeled sealant and let go of a chunk when he was told to by a park worker.

His attorneys and other Trump administration critics have derided the case as an abuse of prosecutorial power and maintain he is being scapegoated for the poor job done fixing up the Reflecting Pool.

At least three other people have been charged in the same court with misdemeanors for allegedly removing pieces of paint from the Reflecting Pool, according to online court records. All three pleaded not guilty during their initial court appearances Wednesday.

The pool was closed for the Independence Day celebration, which featured what Trump said was the largest fireworks display in the world. The president had said that the pool would have to be drained anew as part of the new round of repairs.

Burgum has also said that the Trump administration won’t seek bids for the new rounds of repairs. He told CNN’s “State of the Union” last weekend: “We’ll use the same company because they did a fantastic job.”

Ohio-based Green Water Solutions, also known as Greenwater Services, was given a $1.7-million contract to install a water-purification system in the Reflecting Pool, while Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings was awarded $14.7 million to repaint and waterproof the pool’s concrete floor.

Democratic senators and House members are investigating the pool project, including seeking answers about how much taxpayer funding is involved.

Weissert writes for the Associated Press.

Last week, the U.S. Forest Service and Department of the Interior expanded the situations in which their firefighters are allowed to wear N95 masks.

Starting in September, the federal government began allowing firefighters to wear the masks, but not when they were working on the fire line, only at times such as in camp and sitting in vehicles. Now they’ll be allowed to wear them during some work battling wildfires, including patrolling for areas where the blaze has jumped past fire lines and putting out smoldering remains after a fire is contained.

Masks are still prohibited during firefighters’ most grueling tasks — digging lines to stop fires and directly attacking flames. And the masks they’re using, N95s, do not protect against all of the toxic substances in wildfire smoke.

Nonetheless, health experts applauded the move as a step in the right direction.

Here’s why it took so long to get here:

Research has linked wildfire smoke to a range of long-term health issues, including respiratory problems, cardiovascular diseases and cancers.

“The fire service knows that,” said Rachael Jones, professor and chair of environmental health sciences at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health. “They all have stories” of lung damage or cancer, either their own or their coworkers’.

But this wasn’t always common knowledge.

“The verbiage was that wildland smoke was benign,” one firefighter told Jones’ colleagues for a recent study on firefighters’ thoughts on mask use. “It was like sitting around a campfire.”

Even as scientists and fire officials came to terms with the very real long-term health risks, some firefighters still had concerns that masks could muffle communication, make it hard to breathe and interfere with other equipment. That slowed adoption.

Missing crucial orders because a voice is muffled, or struggling to pull out an emergency fire shelter because a mask is in the way, could be the difference between life and death.

“These are not trivial things when the fact is that they reflect life safety outcome,” Jones said.

Deciding on the right type of mask or respirator has slowed adoption too. There are no commercially available respirators that protect against all of the dangerous pollutants in wildfire smoke.

Scientists have not even fully determined which pollutants pose the greatest risks to firefighters, further complicating a choice.

N95s filter for solid particles in the air but not dangerous gases. Heavy smoke or sweat can cause them to clog.

Half-face respirators — often gray rubber with pink canisters — offer different filters for different gases, but none can filter all of the concerning gases in wildfire smoke. The masks and backup canisters are also much bulkier to carry around than N95s.

Respirators that can filter out all of the “literally hundreds” of concerning compounds in smoke “just simply don’t exist,” said Matt Rahn, research director for the Wildfire Conservancy, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting firefighters.

The result: “In our pursuit for perfection in finding the best respiratory devices for firefighters, we’ve basically fallen into a decision paralysis of doing nothing,” Rahn said. “It’s been that way for years.”

The federal government acknowledges the limitations of N95s in its educational material for firefighters. In a statement to The Times, the Forest Service said it will begin studying different respirators in a small pilot program to “determine if their use will be suitable for the wildland fire environment.”

The Forest Service said that N95s are already “readily available” to its firefighters and that it has more than 30,000 of them.

More recent wildfire news

Many in the western United States will have to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday with fewer fireworks due to heightened wildfire risk. Utah’s governor restricted fireworks statewide through July 5 as multiple wildfires raged in the state and the National Weather Service issued a rare “Particularly Dangerous Situation” warning, Kathy McCormack reports for the Associated Press. California officials, meanwhile, warned of zero tolerance for illegal fireworks, with some local governments recently increasing fines, Kassia Bonesteel reports for CBS News.

Three federal wildland firefighters were killed and two were injured by the fast-moving Knowles fire in Colorado on Saturday. As a ground crew began some of the first attacks on the fire, an order came over the radio to “get out of there now,” CNN reported. Within minutes, the crew was forced to deploy their emergency shelters, a desperate last line of defense when escape is impossible. Firefighters lined the streets of Grand Junction, Colo., on Sunday in a procession for their fallen colleagues.

Much of the western U.S. is facing above normal fire potential after one of the hottest and driest winters in recent years. Coastal Southern California, conversely, is facing average wildfire potential, fire weather analysts say, thanks to monsoon breezes bringing damp air from the tropics.

A few last things in climate news

A pair of hazardous chemical crises in Greater Los Angeles — at an aerospace facility in Garden Grove and a warehouse in Boyle Heights — have left Californians questioning why environmental and public health agencies such as the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health failed to address known risks, a team from CalMatters and the LA Local reports.

The Boyle Heights warehouse fire coincided with a spike in emergency room visits for smoke inhalation and throat pain, my colleague Hayley Smith found. Meanwhile, the water used to fight the toxic blaze ended up in the Los Angeles River, The Times’ Mack Baysinger reports. Local organizers collected water samples for testing as L.A. County public works deployed floating barriers to contain the runoff.

The headwaters of the Colorado River, a vital source of water for 35 million people and 5 million acres of farmland, is drier than anyone can remember, my colleague Ian James reports. As seven U.S. states and Mexico remain gridlocked in complex debates over use of the river, it’s a stark reminder that the climate of the 21st century will leave less for everyone.

Europe is facing its second major heat wave of the year, with France recording its hottest day ever, Lauren Dalban reports for Inside Climate News. As residents struggled to handle the extreme heat, worsened by climate change, so did climate infrastructure championed to combat it. Trains were halted as the heat risked buckling tracks and nuclear reactors were slowed or powered off as the cooling water they discharged became too hot, the New York Times’ Chico Harlan reported.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more wildfire news, follow @nohaggerty on X and @nohaggerty.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Rescue teams in Greece are combing through the rubble for survivors after a four-story apartment building in Athens collapsed on Tuesday. Four people have since been rescued from beneath the debris. Authorities are still investigating the cause of the collapse.