Love + Rosemary Catering is offering a 5-Star 4-Course dinner for your Valentines’ Day. Local oysters, great cheeses, Edible Picasso, and three entree choices.
To order go to:
Call (845) 729-2299
Email: lovenrosemary@gmail.com
Reflections on Cape Charles and the Eastern Shore
Love + Rosemary Catering is offering a 5-Star 4-Course dinner for your Valentines’ Day. Local oysters, great cheeses, Edible Picasso, and three entree choices.
To order go to:
Call (845) 729-2299
Email: lovenrosemary@gmail.com
The Oyster Farm at Kings Creek will be hosting the 2023 Eastern Shore of Virginia Decoy Show. The show is scheduled for Saturday, February 4th 2023 from 9 to 4 PM. and will be inside the Pearl Event Center 700 Marina Village Circle, Cape Charles, VA 23310.
Tables are available for $75.00! For more information, please contact Tommy O’connor at 757.620.8520
The Eastern Shore is still home to some of Virginia’s best carvers and is one of our best sources for linking the Shore’s waterfowl heritage. Decoy carving is a gorgeous art form, but it is also an important way to connect to the Shore’s distinct, cultural heritage.
Copley Auctions will be holding a preview of select items from the upcoming Winter Sale. Please check out our auction preview and let us know if you have any requests for lots you would like us to bring. Decoy Specialist Colin McNair will be picking up consignments for our Sporting Sale.
Meet Pumpkin!
I am a lover of all people big and small, young and old. I enjoy squeaking toys and getting my belly rubbed. In fact, if you’re loving on me, it doesn’t take long for me to roll over for some wonderful belly-rubbing action.
I cannot be around cats at all, but other dogs and children are fine. I am affectionate and playful. I am spayed and up to date on my vaccines.
If you think you may be interested in adopting Pumpkin, you can access an application through several avenues. You can print out an application on our website (www.shorespca.com). You can stop by and do a kennel walk through Tuesday-Saturday from 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m. and grab an application on your visit. You can also email us at shorespca@gmail.com and ask that one be attached and emailed back to you.
You can call the shelter at 757-787-7385 Tuesday-Saturday from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. with any questions,
WASHINGTON, DC: Today, Congresswoman Jen Kiggans (VA-02) released the following statement after being selected to serve on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. The Committee, chaired by Rep. Mike Bost (IL-12), has jurisdiction over any legislation – including the authorization of funding – relating to veterans’ benefits. Additionally, the Committee conducts oversight of the Department of Veterans Affairs. As the home to Naval Air Station Oceana and close neighbor to Norfolk Naval Station, Virginia’s Second District is home to a large population of our nation’s veterans.
“I’m excited to be selected to serve on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs,” said Congresswoman Kiggans. “This committee is the intersection of two of my top priorities: our nation’s heroes and our healthcare system. As a veteran and a primary care provider, I’m keenly aware of the difficulties our veterans face after completing their time serving our nation. We must do better and ensure that the brave men and women who have served our country don’t slip through the cracks. I’m eager to use my position on this Committee to deliver results and improve quality of life for the veterans of the Second District and across the country!”
“I am thrilled to welcome Congresswoman Jen Kiggans to the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. Representing one of the largest populations of veterans and military families in southeastern Virginia, serving in the Navy herself, and then working in geriatric care as a nurse practitioner, Congresswoman Kiggans brings vitally important boots on the ground experience to the Committee,” said Chairman Bost. “I am confident that Jen will be a strong voice for our veteran community and I look forward to serving with her this Congress.”
The Guardian – New York City’s latest plans to crack down on illegal short-term rentals – which could remove as many as 10,000 Airbnb listings later this year – is sparking fierce debates about housing, hotels, the tourist market and residents’ rights.
The new rules will hit those New Yorkers who make extra income by hosting – renting out apartments on Airbnb and similar platforms – but flout city laws, while potentially easing the burden on long-suffering city renters.
Local Law 18, passed by the city council last year, would now require short-term rentals to be registered with the city.
Legal short-term rentals are any properties where no more than two people are hosted, the host resides in the dwelling unit, and where guests have access to all parts of the dwelling unit, according to the city.
Under the crackdown, hosts would need to prove that they reside in the rented properties, that the home is up to safety code and other requirements that amount to a stronger enforcement of existing laws relating to multiple dwellings and permanent residencies.
Platforms that advertise short-term rentals, such as Airbnb and Vrbo, would also be required to ensure that all hosts using the app are abiding by city law and are properly registered.
Previously, the city would rely on individual complaints to address issues with short-term rentals or rely on platforms to enforce the regulations themselves.
But under new rules, any hosts in violation could be fined between $1,000 and $5,000.
This issue has pitted residential communities, hotel businesses, advocates for affordable housing and city leaders across the US and in many other countries near and far against the long-proliferating power and appeal of hosting platforms, given the flexibility they provide travelers.
Santa Monica, California, which Klossner cited as a model for New York, banned renting whole units for less than 30 days, reported the Los Angeles Times. Santa Monica also requires those participating in home-sharing, such as renting out a spare room, to register with the city and pay taxes on the extra income.
Philadelphia also brought in tighter regulations with the new year.
There are over 40,000 Airbnb listings in New York, according to data from Inside Airbnb, a data project on Airbnb and its impact in cities worldwide.
41 A.D. : Roman Emperor Gaius Caesar (Caligula) is assassinated by members of his Praetorian Guard. Nephew of the great Tiberius Caesar, Caligula’s five-year reign quickly degenerated into an orgy of violence and sexual perversion. The Senate conspirators believed that removing him would allow for reinstatement of the Republic, but the army was so incensed by the murder that they spirited away Caligula’s uncle Claudius, rallying the troops to support the imperial throne against the Senate.
1506: The first contingent of Swiss Guards arrives in Vatican City to provide security for the Pope. Swiss mercenaries were legendary for their loyalty to their leadership and ferocious effectiveness in battle. Their appearance at the Holy See during the early rumblings of the Reformation was a perfectly logical extension of their long-running mercenary role on the European military scene. They remain the core of the Vatican’s security.
1564: Pope Pius IV issues the decree Benedictus Deus, ratifying the findings of the long-running Council of Trent. The Council was first seated in 1545 to begin a process of answering the practical and theological issues raised by the burgeoning Protestant movement, in particular the aggressive growth of Lutheranism in Germany, much of which was co-opted and exacerbated by the political struggles between Rome and the Empire. Over the course of its eighteen years, the Council of Trent conducted three major sessions and issued numerous canons and decrees, the vast majority of which remain in force to this day. While confirming some level of reform from the more egregious practices of the Church (i.e. indulgences), its primary products clarified and confirmed the beliefs and historical practices of Roman Catholicism, providing a stable catechism of faith for over three hundred years. The next ecumenical council after Trent took place in June 1868 at the First Vatican Council. The Second Vatican Council of 1962-65 is the most recent convocation of this stature.
1579: Three northern provinces of the Spanish Netherlands sign the Union of Utrecht, pledging to help defend each other from Spanish suppression of Reformation elements in the Low Countries. By early summer, 8 more provinces and city-states attached themselves to the Utrecht group, forming the nucleus of an independent and Protestant Netherlands that would in 1581 declare themselves free from Spanish rule under the Act of Abjuration. The Union signed today put Great Britain into play as the guarantor of the Netherlands’ independence from Spain.
1595: Death of Sir Francis Drake (b.c1540), of dysentery while anchored off the coast of Portobela, Panama. After a swashbuckling and heroic career at sea, which included significant harassment of Spanish treasure fleets, secret surveys, a circumnavigation of the globe, and the destruction of the Spanish Armada, Drake’s life ended while engaged on yet another crusade against the treasures of Spanish America. He requested to be buried in his full armour, and was buried at sea in a lead coffin, which is today the object of regular treasure hunts.
1759: Birth of Scottish poet laureate Robert Burns (d.1796). Burns’s best-known poem is the mock-heroic “Tam o’ Shanter,” published in 1791. He is also well known for his contribution to over three hundred songs that celebrate love, friendship, work, and drink such as “Auld Lang Syne.”
1787: In the final battle of what today is an obscure incident, an unauthorized militia aligned with Massachusetts farmer Daniel Shays conduct a short, sharp battle with the legitimate Massachusetts Militia at the Springfield Armory. Four of Shays’ men are killed, twenty are wounded, and the rebels flee north, totally disbanded. Shays’ Rebellion grew out of attempts to collect debts left over from the Revolution. European investors were putting the squeeze on Boston business owners, demanding payment in specie. The businessmen, in turn made the same demands on their debtors, mostly small freehold farmers in the central part of the state. The collections quickly descended into complete seizures of properties, including houses of the farmers, who felt helpless to resist. Finally, in August of 1786, Bunker Hill veteran Daniel Shays had had enough, and under the rubric of revolution, organized his first band of militia to force the issue at the Springfield courthouse. The situation festered through the Fall and Winter, leading to the climactic battle this day, where the Massachusetts militia, without authorization, drew weapons and ammunition from the Federal Arsenal to prevent Shays’ group from expropriating it first. The threat of further actions of this nature underscored the fundamental weakness of the Articles of Confederation, and spurred calls for a constitutional convention to draft a more effective form of national government, which we now know as the Constitution.
1832: Birth of belle epoch French painter Edouard Manet (d.1883), whose style of relatively rough brushwork on the subjects of everyday life marked the transition between the vivid realism of the early 19th century and the Impressionist period.
1832: Birth of British author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his nom du plume, Lewis Carroll (d.1898). His artistic bent was toward word-play and nonsense literature, most famously his Alice books and the Snark and Jaberwocky poems. He also spent his final 25 years mastering a new art form, photography.
1848: James W. Marshall finds gold at Sutter’s Mill near Coloma, California, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. News of the discovery triggered a massive Gold Rush, bringing over 300,000 prospective miners to the Golden State.
1879: Final day of the two-day Battle of Rorke’s Drift in the Anglo-Zulu war. In this battle, 150 British soldiers ostensibly performing civil engineering functions (kind of a 19th Century “nation-building” exercise) held off multiple waves of over 4,000 Zulu warriors, with only a brief respite from the fighting during the darkness of night. The Zulu leaders halted their attacks after a brief feint just after dawn, leaving behind them nearly a thousand dead and wounded warriors. When the battle ended, the defenders had only 900 rounds of ammunition remaining from the 20,000 rounds stockpiled beforehand. Eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded to the British defenders, the highest-ever number for a single battle.
1880: Birth of Douglas MacArthur (d.1964), American General, Medal of Honor recipient, Army Chief of Staff, Governor of the Philippines, chief executive of occupied Japan.
1887: Birth of Marc Mitscher (d.1947), American Admiral who led his carrier strike groups through wide-ranging and brutally effective campaigns against Japan’s South Pacific empire. He earned particular distinction when, after ordering a follow-on strike late in the day after the Marianas Turkey Shoot, he subsequently ordered his carriers to brightly illuminate their ships and the skies around them in order that his returning fighters could find and land aboard their carriers in the dark. Early in his aviation career, Mitscher piloted the NC-1 flying boat in the Navy’s first attempt to cross the Atlantic by air. He and the NC-1 made it as far as the Azores, while NC-4 continued on to Portugal to complete the mission. The hazards of the mission cannot be overstated, and for his role in it, Mitscher was awarded the Navy Cross.
1901: Death of Alexandrina Victoria of the House of Hanover, better remembered* for nearly 64 years as Her Majesty Victoria, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith, and after 1876, Empress of India.
1919: The delegates meeting at the Paris Peace Conference in Versailles approve a motion to develop a League of Nations, based on President Wilson’s 14 Points.
1924: The Russian city of Petrograd, or St. Petersburg, is renamed Leningrad by the Soviet government in honor of Joseph Stalin who died two days before.
1924: Opening day in Chamonix, France of the first Winter Olympics.
1938: First flight of Lockheed’s P-38 Lightning twin-engine fighter. The airplane was the machine that later carried Major Richard Bong, USAAF to 40 victories in the Pacific theater of WWII, making him the United States’ all-time fighter ace.
1941: Aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, having recently visited Germany to inspect its aviation industry and capabilities, testifies before Congress in favor of a neutrality treaty with the Nazi government. Lindbergh believed the Nazi’s program of centralized economics and strident nationalism was a healthy and correct answer to the problems of society. He became increasingly distrusted by the US government and opinion makers in the popular press.
1943: The U.S. Army’s 8th Air Force launches its first raid into Germany, sending 91 B-17s and B-24s against submarine construction yards in Wilhemshaven.
1944: After 872 days of creating unrelenting shelling and misery for the population of the former Saint Petersburg, the German Wehrmacht lifts its Siege of Leningrad and withdraws, finally allowing the opening a broad corridor for the Soviet government to re-arm and re-supply the citizens and armed forces of that beleaguered city.
1945: The Red Army liberates the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland.
1947: Death of Chicago mobster/businessman/politician/ Ward Chairman / political mentor… Al Capone (b.1899).
1951: The U.S. begins nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Range, using a B-50 bomber (a modified B-29) to drop a Mk-4 device, approximately the same size and weight of the Fat Man used at Nagasaki but with new triggering mechanisms and a modified nuclear pit. The vast majority of the 1,054 U.S. live tests were conducted at the Nevada site.
1960 – The Bathyscaph Trieste descends to the deepest part of the ocean — the Marianas Trench, 36,000 feet down.
1965: Death of Sir Winston Churchill (b.1874).
1967: The crew of Apollo 1, Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, are killed when a fire sweeps through their Command Module during a routine rehearsal prior to the scheduled launch. The ignition source was not conclusively discovered, but the flaws inherent in the initial design were exacerbated by the module being pressurized with pure oxygen to 16 psi to simulate structural pressures in space. Redesign efforts put the program on hold for 20 months.
1968 – While operating in international waters in the Sea of Japan near the Korean coast, USS Pueblo (AGER 2) is seized by North Korean naval vessels. This is the first U.S. warship captured by an enemy since we were fighting the British. Commander Lloyd Bucher and his crew are imprisoned by the NORKs for nearly a year.
2005: Death of President Nixon’s long-serving secretary, Rose Mary Woods (b.1917). During the Watergate hearings, she achieved notoriety, if not fame, for her tortured depiction of how a crucial section of the secretly recorded Oval Office tapes was “inadvertently” erased. By all accounts she was effective, efficient and loyal in her work, but it became painfully clear that her loyalty put her in a very bad spot.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the Commonwealth of Virginia, acting through its agent, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, announce the release of the Draft Chesapeake Bay Oyster Recovery Program Great Wicomico River Supplemental Environmental Assessment (SEA). This Draft SEA evaluates alternatives that have the potential to improve the current and future function of eight restored reefs in the Great Wicomico River, Virginia. The study recommends expanding one reef, upgrading low-relief areas (2-4 inches high) of several reefs using small, 3-inch stone to a height of 12 inches, and adding large stones for additional habitat.
The public is invited to review and provide comments to the study and the document. The Draft SEA is accessible at the USACE project website: https://www.nao.usace.army.mil/About/Projects/Oyster-Restoration/
Hard copies of the report can be provided upon request.
Comments may also be submitted to the USACE at david.m.schulte@usace.army.mil or by mail to Mr. David Schulte, U.S. army Corps of Engineers, Norfolk District, 803 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510, until February 28, 2023. If you need more information or require special assistance, please contact Mr. David Schulte at (757) 201-7007.
Deforestation reduces the forest’s ability to generate rain clouds, which significantly raises the odds of drought. And the more fragmented the forest is, the harder it is to bounce back after a drought ends. Over-harvesting and passing the forest’s tipping point would be devastating for the forest’s biodiversity and for the Indigenous people that live there. The forests of the Amazon area are home to more than 3 million species of plants and animals. They also store large amounts of carbon dioxide that, if the forests die, would be released back into the atmosphere.
This week, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Colombian President Gustavo Petro formed a “pact” earlier this month to try to save the Amazon “for humanity.”
An estimated 13 to 17% of the original Amazon rainforest has been deforested over the last half-century.
In a paper published in the journal Science, an international team of scientists report humans are causing changes to the Amazonian ecosystem in a matter of decades or centuries, as opposed to millions to tens of millions of years for natural processes. “Organisms can’t adapt in the period of decades or centuries,” Albert says.
Another analysis looked at the problem of land degradation in the Amazon due to logging, fires, extreme droughts, and changes at the edges of the forest caused by the habitat being fragmented.
Their projections suggest “degradation will continue to be a major source of emissions in the region, regardless of what happens with deforestation,” says study co-author David Lapola, a research scientist at the University of Campinas (Unicamp) in Brazil. “We need specific policies to handle degradation. It’s not using the same policies and actions for deforestation,” he says.
The following article is written by By Karen Davis, PhD, President, United Poultry Concerns.
Back in the early 1980s, when I joined the emerging Animal Rights Movement, little attention was paid to farmed animals. The general attitude back then was: “It’s hard enough to get people to care about whales. How can we ever hope to get them to care about a chicken?” Back then, most if not all of those running the traditional animal welfare organizations ate animals. Animals were on their plates, not off them.
But in the mid-1980s, a Revolution was getting underway. New animal advocacy groups sprang up: Farm Animal Reform Movement, Farm Sanctuary, PETA. These groups were founded and led by activists who practiced and promoted, veganism – ethical veganism for the animals, not just about food and diet.
In the 1990s, farmed animals started appearing on the animal advocacy agenda. Veal calves isolated from their mothers in wooden crates comparable to a coffin. Hens caged for life in Henitentaries. These two abuses, especially, drew attention. At the same time, the idea persisted that being vegan is a personal choice rather than an ethical imperative. “We can’t impose our values” kind of thing.
Today, most animal organizations in the U.S. include farmed animals, whose plight on factory farms they acknowledge. The question is, what form does farmed animal advocacy take in our contemporary animal advocacy movement? What are groups actually doing? What are they asking, or urging, their supporters and others to do for the largest population of abused animals on the planet: those billions of chickens, turkeys, cows, pigs, ducks, aquatic animals and so many more, each of whom is an individual, an embodied consciousness with feelings, the same as ourselves.
The question involves asking: What is our goal for farmed animals?
I take this opportunity to express a concern I have, looking forward.
One group’s long-term goals for several categories of animals are: ending fur-wearing, ending puppy mills, ending the use of animals in personal-care product testing. By contrast, this group’s long-term goal, or “vision,” for farmed animals is, vaguely, “a better life” – a “better life’ in conditions that cannot be good, compared to the life these animals need and deserve to enjoy every bit as much as you or I, a cat or a dog. For farmed animals, the long-term goal for this advocacy group is merely to eliminate “extreme confinement and other inhumane practices.” The single exception: “Dogs are no longer raised and killed for their meat.”
Unlike wearing fur, for example, dining on animals other than dogs is not an issue as long as the animals on the plate were treated “humanely” on the farm and during slaughter. The term “humane” in this context is whitewashed not only by animal-abusing industries, but by animal advocacy societies that support the continuation of animal farms. One’s eyes glaze over just looking at the word, “humane.” No wonder. The cruelest, most brutal and atrocious industrial farming conditions and practices have become the standard by which “humane” treatment of farmed animals is measured.
What does “animal advocacy” even mean when it condones cutting an animal’s throat for cuisine? When it condones “culling” – removing and killing animals who aren’t “producing” enough flesh, milk or eggs for profit? And when it hides the realities of so-called humane animal farming in a way that hardly differs from how agribusiness and its affiliates bury their brutalities in euphemisms and lies?
Seldom, if ever, does a “humane farming” advocacy group reveal the atrocities of one of its humane-certified farms. Typically it takes an OUTSIDER – an investigative journalist, an accidental visitor, a whistleblower – to reveal what goes on in those places. Only then might we learn that a “humane certifier,” so-called, has “suspended” certification of a particular farm. Doesn’t this say something about the entire “humane farming” enterprise?
Workers Treated as Badly as the Animals?
Another large animal advocacy group posted an article in December advocating what its president called, “Smaller farms that treat animals humanely,” going on to say that “factory farming . . . is just as brutal to humans as it is to animals.” It is painful to read this false equivalence and to quote it.
Factory-farming is NOT just as brutal to humans, by which the writer means small rural farmers and factory-farm workers, as it is to the animals. Yes, it is brutal to workers, in corporate slaughterhouses especially. But there’s a Huge Difference here: Unlike the chickens, turkeys, cows, pigs, fishes and other victims of factory farming, the workers are not the legally enslaved property of corporations. They are not the ones being SLAUGHTERED.
Moreover, the workers are not intentionally mutilated (without pain relievers, of course) as the animals are (debeaked, detoed, ear-cropped, etc.). They do not endure the terror and indignity of artificial insemination and masturbation that “breeding” turkeys and pigs helplessly endure; they are not subjected to genetic assault to produce bodies and body parts designed for human consumption. “We are no longer selling broilers, we are selling pieces. A knowledge of how broilers of different strains and sexes grow and become pieces is increasingly important” (“Latest research findings reported at annual poultry science meeting,” Feedstuffs, Sept. 7, 1992).
The workers and rural farmers are not forced to live without respite in filthy, polluted buildings and feedlots from which they cannot escape. Unlike the animals, workers can walk outside for a breath of air if they choose. Not being enslaved property like the animals, they can walk away for good; and, unlike the animals, the workers get to go home, even after a miserable work shift. By contrast, the animals never get to “go home,” ever. The only “home” they will ever know is that Home in the Sky where they are finally free, in other words, Dead.
As we begin the New Year, I urge my fellow animal rights advocates to think about what we want to say and do on behalf of farmed animals and their plight in 2023 and beyond. A fellow activist sent me an email in December about the situation I have described.
He wrote:
If they had said that their ultimate vision was that no animal should be exploited and raised for food, no animal should be killed, and the animal-based food industries should pass out of existence, but until that happens it is a good thing to lessen the suffering of captive animals if we can do that, that would be an argument that might work. But they couldn’t bring themselves to say that.
Why couldn’t they? What are the forces that put farmed animals forever in the Land of the Forsaken by their “advocates”?
In The Divine Comedy, Dante passes through the gate of Hell, which bears the inscription: “ Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate,” typically translated as “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
Translation: “Long-term vision” for farmed animals. Is this our vision? As farmed animal advocates, we really do have to choose. – Karen Davis
The following Op-Ed is written and submitted by Paul Plante.
How many times now have we heard it said by Democrat Joe Biden that for there to be progress, somebody has to be hurt?
Yes, people, as Joe Biden says, and he would know because he is president and presidents know these things, progress is indeed disruptive to the status quo and as we will soon see from the New York Daily News article “E-bike battery blaze in Queens kills man and hospitalizes 10 others: FDNY” by Nicholas Williams and Thomas Tracy on January 21, 2023, progress, especially the “green” progress being pushed by Joe Biden to save the galaxy and universe from global warming, which will make Joe a hero, “green” progress can be quite deadly, as well.
But as Joe says, people, we will not be conquered by things like these, because, well, they happen, how can there be progress afterall if somebody is not hurt, people being hurt a necessary and sure sign that progress is indeed being made, and as a people, and as a nation, we will endure and not only will we endure, but we will emerge from this a better people, a stronger people, a more equitable people and just all-around nice people, which is a win-win-win-win for the nation and Biden regime.
And so that we can see what I am talking about, and the glorious future “GREEN JOE” Biden is leading us into, however reluctantly on our parts, which is why we all need Joe as our leader, let’s go to the story to see what happened and why it is a sure sign of “GREEN PROGRESS”, to wit:
A man was killed and 10 others were hospitalized when a charging e-bike battery sparked a raging Queens fire that tore through a home near LaGuardia airport, police and fire officials said Saturday.
end quotes
So, okay, yes, somebody did get killed here, but that is part of how progress is achieved, by studying these things and learning from these things, which is how we become a better and stronger people, those of us who survive, anyway, which takes us back for more details, as follows:
The blaze is the first fatal fire sparked by the lithium-ion batteries used in e-bikes and electric scooters this year, FDNY officials said.
Last year, six people died in fires caused by these batteries.
“How many places have caught on fire because of these things?” stunned neighbor Anette Ruiz asked as she looked over pieces of the burned e-bike scattered on the ground outside the scorched brick-faced home.
“It’s very dangerous and they continue to sell these things,” Ruiz, 26, said.
“At the end of the day it’s harmful and people can lose their life.”
end quotes
But with run-away global warming that threatens to wipe us all out in the next year or so if we don’t go GREEN ON STEROIDS, that is a small price to have to pay.
Going back for more details, we have:
A charging e-bike in the first-floor hallway of the 89th St. home in Jackson Heights exploded into flames around 11 p.m. Friday, officials said.
“[It] sounded like pops from the backyard,” neighbor Steve Gutierrez said.
“I saw the black smoke coming from back there.”
A moment later, building residents were running into the street, Gutierrez, 23, recalled.
“They were calling for a ladder in Spanish,” he remembered.
“Once I saw the fire get on the electrical wiring, that’s when I was like ‘Ok, let’s get everyone out of the house.’”
The burning e-bike was next to a first-floor staircase when it caught fire, FDNY officials said.
The resulting inferno was so intense that it burned through the first-floor and second-floor staircases, causing them to collapse as firefighters entered the building.
With the staircases burned through, firefighters had to bring in portable ladders to get up to the second and third floors as the fire raged around them.
Firefighters found a man in his 60s on the second floor of the three-story home suffering from smoke inhalation.
He was rushed to Elmhurst Hospital where he died.
The victim’s name has not been released as cops try to track down family members.
Six other residents of the home — which included a 57-year-old woman, a 45-year-old man and a 33-year-old man — who were rescued from the building, were taken to area hospitals with smoke inhalation, but were expected to recover.
Four firefighters suffered minor injuries as the staircases they were on collapsed around them, an FDNY official said.
About 100 firefighters responded to the blaze, which took about an hour to snuff out.
The fire threatened to spread to other homes, but was contained before it damaged any other addresses, firefighters said.
end quotes
So, okay, people, yes, there was a fire and yes, somebody died as a result, and a lot of other people are now homeless, but that is the price of freedom from global warming and CO2, people.
Before that E-bike battery exploded and burned down the house, think how much CO2 it kept from going into the environment and causing global warming which could kill us all, while this fire only killed one person, which takes us back for more details, to wit:
Lithium-ion batteries were responsible for more than 200 fires in the city last year, FDNY officials said.
About 140 people have been hurt and six people have been killed in these fires, authorities said.
That’s more than double the number of lithium-ion battery fires the FDNY saw in 2021, when 100 fires were linked to e-bike and scooter batteries.
The FDNY has repeatedly warned about the dangers of placing e-bikes and scooters near staircases, which would cut off means of escape if they catch fire.
Fire officials have also cautioned against allowing the batteries to charge overnight.
Most of the batteries that spark fires are pre-owned and resold and not compatible with a new device or have been damaged by repeated wear and tear on the roads.
Some landlords, as well as several colleges, have banned lithium-ion battery-propelled scooters and e-bikes from their buildings because of the potential dangers.
The City Council is also considering legislation to regulate the sale of the batteries.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission sent a letter to 2,000 manufacturers and importers of e-bikes and other e-devices late last year urging them to comply with relevant safety standards due to an uptick in fires.
end quotes
And there we have it, people – signs of progress in the bold new GREEN WORLD of American president Joseph Robinette Biden, Junior, a true AMERICAN HERO if there ever was one!