NM wildfire evacuees fret about their future as finances run low
MORA, N.M. — As more than 2,700 firefighters in northern New Mexico continued to battle the nation’s largest active wildfire Sunday, many evacuees were growing concerned about their future after weeks away from home.
The biggest fire in the state’s recorded history has been burning for six weeks, and some of the hundreds forced to evacuate say their financial resources are dwindling.
Amity Maes, 30, a Mora resident who said she is 8 ½ months pregnant and penniless, told the Santa Fe New Mexican that she bounced around for weeks before finding shelter at an evacuation center in Glorieta, where she believes she contracted COVID-19.
Officials at Glorieta Adventure Camps said there have been 67 coronavirus cases among evacuees, including some that required hospitalization.
After her isolation period, Maes said she was urged to leave and go to a hotel in Santa Fe where she could be closer to a hospital if she went into labor. But the hotel didn’t have her reservation when she arrived, and when she finally got a room, it was only for one night.
“They keep encouraging us to go to Albuquerque” where evacuees are being housed in hotels, Maes told the newspaper. “We don’t have gas. We don’t have no income. There’s no gas vouchers. There’s no anything. I’m on a quarter-tank of gas, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
The Glorieta retreat center has housed hundreds of people this month and hosted a dozen organizations providing services and resources to evacuees. But it is scheduled to close its shelter this week to prepare for its annual summer camps.
Staffers are trying to ensure the center’s guests have a place to go when the doors close, but some families are uncertain where they will land.
Heather Nordquist, who has been engaged in issues affecting northern New Mexico residents, said evacuees’ needs are not being met. She has collected about $3,000 in donations, which she has used for food, gift and gas cards, and supplies for evacuees.
“I am so deeply discouraged that our tax dollars aren’t finding their way to these evacuees,” she told the New Mexican.
The wildfire remained 40% contained around its perimeter Sunday.
The average U.S. price of regular-grade gasoline spiked 33 cents over the past two weeks to $4.71 per gallon.
Industry analyst Trilby Lundberg of the Lundberg Survey said Sunday that the average price at the pump is $1.61 higher than it was one year ago.
Nationwide, the highest average price for regular-grade gas is in the San Francisco Bay Area, at $6.20 per gallon. The lowest average is in Tulsa, Okla., at $3.92 per gallon. The average price of diesel rose 9 cents over two weeks, to $5.66 a gallon.
Gasoline prices: Southern Baptists report:
Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant denomination, stonewalled and denigrated survivors of clergy sex abuse over almost two decades while seeking to protect their own reputations, according to a scathing 288-page investigative report issued Sunday.
These survivors, and other concerned Southern
Baptists, repeatedly shared allegations with the SBC’s Executive Committee, “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling and even outright hostility from some within the EC,” said the report.
The seven-month investigation was conducted by Guidepost Solutions, an independent firm contracted by the Executive Committee after delegates to last year’s national meeting pressed for a probe by outsiders.
The Executive Committee is set to hold a special meeting Tuesday to discuss the report.
COVID-19 cases: The pandemic is “most certainly not over,” the head of the World Health Organization warned Sunday, despite a decline in reported cases since the peak of the omicron wave.
The U.N. health agency’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told
officials gathered in Geneva for opening of the WHO’s annual meeting that “declining testing and sequencing means we are blinding ourselves to the evolution of the virus.”
He also noted that almost 1 billion people in lower-income countries have not been vaccinated.
In a weekly report Thursday on the global situation, WHO said the number of new COVID-19 cases appears to have stabilized after weeks of decline since late March, while the overall number of weekly deaths dropped.
While there has been progress, with 60% of the world’s population vaccinated, “it’s not over anywhere until it’s over everywhere,” he said.
Peanut butter recall: Consumers should doublecheck their jars of Jif peanut butter amid a recall, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say.
Jif ’s creamy, crunchy, natural and reduced fat peanut butters have been linked to a salmonella outbreak across 12 states that has left 14 ill, with two people being hospitalized. Side effects from salmonella poisoning include fever, diarrhea, nausea and vomiting.
The J.M. Smucker Co. announced a voluntary recall of some Jif peanut butter products for potential salmonella contamination. Jars with lot codes 1274425 through 2140425 have been recalled and should be disposed, the company said.
Salmonella cases were reported in Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, New York, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington state.
Monkeypox: President Joe Biden said Sunday that recent cases of monkeypox that have been identified in Europe and the United States were something “to be concerned about.”
In his first public comments on the disease, Biden added: “It is a concern in that if it were to spread, it would be consequential.”
Biden was asked about the disease as he spoke to reporters at Osan Air Base in South Korea, where he visited troops before taking off for Japan to continue his first trip to Asia as president.
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, told reporters aboard the flight to Tokyo that the United States has a supply of “vaccine that is relevant to treating monkeypox.”
Monkeypox is rarely identified outside of Africa, but as of Friday, there were 80 confirmed cases worldwide, including at least two in the U.S., and another 50 suspected ones. A “presumptive” case of monkeypox is being investigated in South Florida, state health officials said Sunday.
Although the disease belongs to the same virus family as smallpox, its symptoms are milder.