Evacuations

Maui County says the number of confirmed deaths from the wildfires on the island has risen to 96. Hawaii Gov. Josh Green says he expects the number of victims to rise. In a video update released Sunday, Green says there were 2,700 structures destroyed in Lahaina with an estimated loss of $5.6 billion in the wildfires. Green says FEMA is overseeing the federal response in Hawaii with 416 personnel including FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell. He says President Joe Biden has “authorized the full force of the federal government in support of us.”

Wildfires in Hawaii fanned by strong winds have burned multiple structures, forced evacuations and caused power outages in several communities. Firefighters have struggled to reach some areas cut off by downed trees and power lines. Some homes have been evacuated on Maui and the Big Island and Hawaii's acting governor has issued an emergency proclamation. The National Weather Service says Hurricane Dora passing to the south of the island chain is partly to blame for strong gusts that toppled power lines and grounded fire-fighting helicopters. Fire crews on Maui were battling multiple blazes Tuesday concentrated in two areas: the popular tourist destination of West Maui and an inland, mountainous region.

A French military transport plane carrying Europeans from Niger arrived in Paris Wednesday, in the first such evacuation flight since mutinous soldiers ousted the country’s democratically elected president nearly a week ago and shut its borders. France, Italy and Spain all announced evacuations from Niger for their citizens and other European nationals, concerned that they risked becoming trapped by the coup that won backing Tuesday three other West African nations also ruled by mutinous soldiers. The French Foreign Ministry in Paris cited recent violence that targeted the French Embassy as one of the reasons for the evacuation. The decision comes during a deepening crisis sparked by the coup last week against Niger’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum.

A third successive heat wave in Greece pushed temperatures back above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) across parts of the country following more nighttime evacuations from fires that have raged out of control for days. The latest evacuations orders were issued on the islands of Corfu and Evia. A blaze on the island of Rhodes continued to move inland on Tuesday. The flames torched mountainous forest areas including part of a nature reserve. European Union officials blamed climate change for the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires across the European continent. They noted that 2022 was the second-worst year for wildfire damage on record after 2017.

The worst wildfire season in Canadian history is displacing Indigenous communities from Nova Scotia to British Columbia.

Hundreds of Americans fleeing the fighting in Sudan reached the country’s port Saturday in the first U.S.-run evacuation.